


Your Mouth Is Poison

by magnolia_9



Series: Wolf at Your Door [3]
Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Comic Spoilers, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Smut, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-07-12 19:28:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16001756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnolia_9/pseuds/magnolia_9
Summary: Two years after losing the war with Alexandria and his freedom, Negan must find his place in the new world order. Sequel toWolf at Your Door.





	1. Your Mouth Is Poison

**Author's Note:**

> *cartwheels* Let's do this thing! Title from "Poison & Wine" by The Civil Wars.

Rick made his way slowly up the dusty path. His knee was throbbing - it had been worse than usual the last few days with the heavy rains that had soaked Alexandria, but he couldn’t complain. The gardens needed it, and he was on his way back from tending the lushly blooming rows of greenery. Even the tiny little wildflowers that had sprung up all over town seemed taller and stronger with the deluge of life-giving water, so a few aches and pains seemed like a small price to pay.

He crouched, unable to suppress a small groan as his knee protested, and gathered up a few of the yellow-white blossoms for Judith. He tucked them in the front pocket of his shirt before using his cane to brace himself as he rose again. He shaded his eyes and looked towards Rosita’s house. He could just make her out sitting on her front porch, shoulders slumped and elbows resting on her knees. He turned his steps to her.

“Hey,” she called as he approached. “How’re the veggies and shit?”

Rick grinned at her as he made his way up the few steps to her porch. “Perfect. I’ll teach you all about ‘em if you just - “

Rosita gave an exaggerated groan, a teasing smile lighting up her beautiful face. “Come on, how many times do I gotta tell you? Can’t grow _shit_. I couldn’t keep a cactus alive in the old days. A fucking cactus! I’m happy being muscle on this big-ass team patrol we got going, okay? Aaron says it lets me work out my anger issues, and I didn’t punch him for saying that, so I guess that shit _is_ working.”

Rick laid a hand on her shoulder as he stood over her, braced on the cane. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

Rosita gave a rueful chuckle. “You heard, huh?”

Rick carefully sat down in the chair beside her. “I heard you lost somebody out there.”

“Mike,” Rosita muttered, hanging her head. “Mikey. We had just started…started something. Fucking, I guess, but I liked him. We got off on the wrong foot, but hey, it’s the end of the goddamn world. Why hold a grudge, right?” At Rick’s puzzled look, Rosita laughed again, more bitterly than before. “He was a Savior. I remembered him from that night, can you fucking believe it? When Glenn and Abe got wasted. I thought I didn’t remember anyone other than Negan, but then I saw his face, and it clicked.”

Rick was aware of staring at her, his mouth a little slack.

She caught the look and smiled, sharp and sad all at the same time. “What, you’re the only one who’s allowed to fuck someone who was there that night on the wrong side of the damn line-up? And you went for the fucking gold with that, too.”

Rick bent his head, flushing unhappily.

Rosita reached over and bumped his shoulder lightly with her fist as if to take the sting out of her words. “And it was right after that chick from the Kingdom. Jill. I fucked her once, Rick, and next thing I hear, she’s dead of fucking appendicitis. You fucking kidding me? This shit with Mike proves it. Everyone I fuck dies.” She gestured glumly towards her hips. “I don’t know. Maybe my shit is cursed.”

“Rosita,” Rick protested. “You know that ain’t it. We just…we just live dangerous lives here. Even with things goin’ the way they are, it’s still…” he trailed off, and he brought his hand to his face to wearily rub at his eyes. “Well,” he sighed, “it ain’t like nobody died before this all started.”

“If nobody died before this all started, no dead sons of bitches would be trying to eat us,” Rosita agreed, kicking out her long, slim legs.

“Well, anyway, I’m sorry,” Rick said, reaching over to squeeze her shoulder again.

Rosita caught his hand with hers, and they sat in companionable silence for a moment like that, fingers twined together.

“What about Tara?” Rick ventured hesitantly.

Rosita blew out a heavy breath. She didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about. “Haven’t you been listening, man?” she said tiredly. “Tara deserves better.”

“Don’t say - “

“I can’t talk about this,” she said sharply, pulling her hand from his. “Okay? Shit, I know you’re trying to help, Rick, but I swear - “

“All right,” he said soothingly, leaning back in his chair. “Sorry.”

She sighed again, scrubbing a hand through the black hair tumbling over shoulders. “Don’t apologize,” she muttered. “Just tell me what’s new with you. Haven’t seen you around lately.”

“Just busy with the garden, mostly,” Rick murmured, head tilted up to catch the fading light of the day. “Carl wants to leave,” he added morosely. “That’s new.”

“For the Hilltop, right?” Rosita shrugged when Rick shot her a surprised look. “He’s been talking about it.”

“What do you think?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. You’re his dad.”

“But what do you think?” Rick persisted.

Rosita pushed a hand through her hair again, shrugging. “He wants to learn how to do some useful shit. Seems reasonable. And he can give Maggie a hand with Hershel, you know? He’s good with babies.”

Rick closed his eyes, trying to will away the the ache in his throat. “He’s hardly at home anymore, anyway. Judy’s growing like a weed, too. Half the time she’s out with Michonne or Eric or Gabriel or Tara, just gettin’ into every new thing she can find. Pretty soon I’m gonna be left with an empty nest and a bum leg. Nothin’ left for me to do but grow vegetables by my damn self.” He felt almost instantly guilty for the rare indulgence in self-pity, but he could almost see that bleak stretch of empty days in front of him.

“You’re lonely,” Rosita observed quietly. “That why you’re spending so much time with your pet monster in the basement?”

Rick felt his face grow warm again. “He’s my responsibility. Got no choice but to spend time with him.”

“Come on, Rick. Don’t try and play me with that.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t want you to say anything. I’m not fucking judging you. I never judged you.”

“Rosita,” he said, a little desperately, “it’s not…I don’t know what you think - “

“Rick, Rick, _Rick_ ,” she said with the faintest bite of mocking. She sounded so like Negan in that moment that it brought him up short, and he stared at her with helpless eyes. She reached over and laid her hand on his forearm, and again, the touch felt like an apology. “What’s he fucking like lately, anyway? He still treating you like shit?”

“No,” Rick said after a quiet moment. “He’s better. He’s not…as angry as he used to be,” he qualified. The warm weight of Rosita’s touch on his arm spurned him on somehow. “He’s happy to see me when I go down there, and he doesn’t try to hide it like he used to. He tries to get me to stay longer and longer. To spend more time with him, talkin’ about any old thing. He’s lonely. He’s still _Negan_ , but he’s lonely.”

“He’s lonely,” Rosita agreed, “and he wants you. He always did. He’s not gonna just stop.”

_And neither are you._

The unspoken words hung in the air between them.

It was the plain truth, and Rick didn’t know what to do with it. He was under siege by it.

The want inside him, tainted as it was by the festering of all that pain and betrayal and resentment that lay between them, just refused to die. It wouldn’t die before the war, it hadn’t died during the war, and it wouldn’t die now that the war had receded like a bad dream. It lumbered on and on, an immortal, unnatural horror, not so unlike the monsters that now held dominion over the earth. Rick hated it, hated himself, hated Negan most of the time, and all that hate never seemed to make a difference.

It had _never_ fucking made a difference.

“I gotta go. I…gotta make sure he got his dinner,” Rick said sheepishly.

Rosita laughed, a real laugh this time, loud and mirthful. “Okay, wifey,” she snickered, leaning over and pressing brief kiss to Rick’s cheek. “I gotta go, too. Promised I’d sort through some supplies down in the infirmary. Need help?”

Rick was slowly pushing to his feet with the aid of his cane. “Nah, I got it. Just having a few bad days with all this rain. I don’t usually move like such an old man.”

“And what does your _cabron_ have to say about it?” Rosita asked acidly, and the swiftness with which her sudden displeasure dissipated the light tone their conversation had just achieved was dismaying. Rosita hardly ever got to spend a minute not being angry.

“He doesn’t really say anything about it. He pretends it’s not there. That’s how I know he’s sorry about it now.”

Rosita shook her head slowly as she watched Rick make his careful way down the stairs. “You’re too good, Rick.”

“Don’t know about that.” He paused for a moment, tossing a glance over his shoulder. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” she answered softly. “You?”

“Yeah,” Rick echoed. “‘M all right.” He turned towards Alexandria’s prison, population of one.

—

The first week or so after the final battle of the bitter war with the Saviors was hazy in Rick’s mind. He spent it confused and feverish, his consciousness only surfacing for brief stretches before he was sent aloft again on a cloud of painkillers.

He thought he was riding in some kind of vehicle at times. He thought he heard people weeping around him, heard distant voices. He thought he dreamt it, and a part of him wondered if he had dreamt all of it, if he might not wake up in a hospital in King County, Georgia with Lori, Shane, and a two-eyed, baby-faced Carl waiting by his side.

He woke up alone and in the dark, and he knew he wasn’t in King County. He struggled to get out of bed, and he succeeded, in a sense: he tumbled over the edge and on to the floor. The pain in his knee was a supernova. It obliterated him in its spreading heat, and he nearly vomited. He heard frantic footsteps up the hall, and light flooded the room as the door banged open.

Siddiq was wearing a pair of striped pajamas that looked like they belonged to someone much younger or much older. His dark hair stuck every which way, and he dropped to his knees in front of Rick and stared at him with wide, concerned eyes. “Why did you try to get up?” he asked gently, his hands fluttering over him and deftly checking him for new injuries.

“I don’t know,” Rick admitted. “I think I…I was just confused, I guess.” His voice was a dry croak in his throat.

The slighter man helped him carefully back into bed, pausing to let Rick adjust to each painful shift in position. When they were finished, Rick’s cheeks were damp with the tears of pain that he was helpless to stem, and his chest heaved like he had run a marathon.

“Carl will be very annoyed with me,” Siddiq said sheepishly. “He’s been watching you every night, and I sent him home to get some rest.”

“You did the right thing.” Rick gave a sudden hiss of pain through his teeth as another bolt of agony went up his thigh and sizzled through his spine. “What’s wrong with it?” he whispered. “It feels like it’s on fire.”

Siddiq sat heavily in the chair beside him and fixed him with another concerned look, sadder this time. “The leg…” he began, and then he dropped his head and sighed. “It’s hard to know where to start, to be honest. There are extensive fractures, displaced and non-displaced, all through the long bones that meet at the knee. The patella is in pieces. The soft tissue damage is extensive. The crush injury at the joint…to treat something like that properly, you need…well, you need an orthopedic surgeon and a knee replacement.” Siddiq swallowed hard. “But all you have is me. I splinted it. That’s all that I had the capability to do.”

Rick reached over and patted the man’s clasped hands. “I’m sure you’ve done plenty,” he rasped. “Am I gonna be able to walk?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt the cold bloom of terror in the pit of his stomach. He would be worse than useless if the answer was no - he’d be a liability. He fixed his anxious gaze on Siddiq’s soft doe’s eyes. “Just tell me the truth, doc. I gotta know.”

“I can’t tell you how much function you’ll regain at the joint, or even if you’ll regain any. But you’ll be able to walk with some kind of assistance. You’ll probably always have pain.” He swallowed again, and his gaze grew sadder. “I don’t think you’ll be doing any running or climbing or jumping, though. I might be wrong, but I think the best we can hope for is that you’ll be able to walk comfortably with a cane or walker.”

“A walker,” Rick echoed disbelievingly, letting his head fall back against the pillows. “Jesus Christ.”

“Maybe a cane,” Siddiq said hastily.

“Is it always…gonna feel like this?” Rick asked, and he felt another icy little burst of fear.

Siddiq was shaking his head, hard. “No, no - you’re infected. With a soft tissue infection!” He clarified hastily, eyes widening at his own words. “The ordinary kind! The flesh was macerated. It was almost inevitable. But you’ve been responding well to the antibiotics.”

“Antibiotics? We hardly had any left. Where…?”

“The Sanctuary,” Siddiq broke in softly. “We brought you there after it happened. That’s where I got the xray of the knee, too. They, uh…they’re pretty well set-up, medically speaking.”

Sanctuary. Saviors. Negan. The question had been there, fluttering in the back of his mind, like an increasingly frantic bird trapped in a room. Rick drew a slow, deep breath before he asked. “Where is he?”

“Down the hall,” Siddiq responded, brow furrowing a little.

 _Alive._ Rick couldn’t name all of the feelings that rushed through him. “How is he?”

“How…? Oh, he’s…he’s fine.” At Rick’s confused stare, he ran a hand through his unruly dark hair, blinking. “He’s weak from the blood loss, but it’s nothing that plenty of fluids and bed rest won’t fix.”

“There’s no…” Rick struggled for a moment, trying to phrase the question. “No…permanent damage?”

“Oh, no.” Siddiq grew flustered under Rick’s gaze, shifting almost nervously in his chair. “The laceration was very superficial. The neck is highly vascularized, and an injury like that can look so much worse than it really is. Of course, without prompt attention, you could still have a bad outcome from the blood loss. But the damage was to superficial vessels only. I ligated a few of the persistent bleeders, and then closed him up. He’ll have a scar. Nothing else.” Siddiq squeezed his hands together. “Did you…were you meaning to harm him more seriously?” he asked, almost meekly.

“No,” Rick croaked. “I didn’t want…I just needed him to...to stop. But there was so much blood, I was afraid -” he caught himself on that word - _afraid_ \- and pressed his lips together.

Siddiq was nodding, looking a little relieved. “You did it,” he said softly. “You defeated an enemy without taking his life. You’re a…a great man, Mr. Grimes.”

“Don’t,” Rick sighed, closing his eyes. “I ain’t tryin’ to be rude, doc, I just…it’s the last thing I wanna hear right now. Can I see him?”

“Not in the shape you’re in,” Siddiq said, sounding taken aback. “You can hardly move. You need to get better, Mr. Gr-“

“Rick,” he interrupted softly. “Call me Rick.”

“You need to get better, Rick.” His name sounded shy on the young man’s lips.

“Okay. That’s fair. Help me get better, doc.”

“I’ll do my best,” Siddiq answered solemnly.

It was another week and a half before Rick was able to use a pair of crutches to make his way to the room at the far end of Alexandria’s infirmary. The one that was now locked with a chain and guarded at the door and its single window by gun-toting, grim-faced Alexandrians.

Negan was so pale and still against the white sheets that Rick was momentarily alarmed. The dark lashes sweeping his cheek and dark tendrils of hair falling over his forehead just made his ashen skin that much more stark. He was almost the color of the bandage wound around his throat, and Rick felt his heart begin to pound in his chest. The rush of adrenaline set off a throbbing in his leg.

“Negan?” he whispered.

His eyes sprang open, and the impression of frailty vanished. His eyes were embers in his face, and they shone with a kind of hellish vitality. “Sweetheart,” he drawled nonchalantly, “you came to visit. Finally.” He took Rick in with a frown. “Fuck. You couldn’t fucking clean up a little before you came over? Give me something to fucking look at? You look like absolute shit right now, babe.”

He was cuffed to the bed. He was defeated. He was a prisoner, Alexandria’s prisoner, Rick’s prisoner. But even now, his voice filled the room like he was addressing a rapt audience. Even now, he had the power to make Rick feel so small and stupid.

He could already feel the humiliated flush rising in his cheeks, and by Negan’s cold smile, so could he. “There’s a prison cell in the basement of one of these buildings,” he began, shifting uncomfortably on his crutches. “That’s where you’re goin’. The terms of surrender for the Sanctuary have been worked out, and this is part of it. The Sanctuary is entering the alliance between the communities as an equal partner, but you…you aren’t in charge anymore, Negan. You’re Alexandria’s prisoner now, for everything you’ve done. You’re lucky it’s us,” he said quietly, “because the Hilltop, the Kingdom, and Oceanside all wanted you. Sherry insisted you come to m- us. Made it a term in the agreement. She’s leading the Sanctuary now. Set set up a council…are you listening?”

Negan’s expression had smoothed out and become watchful. His eyes swept Rick continuously, and he didn’t seem to have any particular reaction to anything he was saying. There was something menacing in his detachment, his lack of concern. He looked like a chained beast focused on prey just out of his reach. Rick felt the hair at the back of his neck prickle.

“How bad is the knee?” Negan smiled toothily at Rick’s uncomprehending look. “Bad enough that you can’t ride me? If you’re done delivering the sentence, officer, you could do me a solid and hop on. Needless to say, I haven’t been laid in a while.”

It knocked the air out of him, and he gaped for what felt like minutes. “Have you lost your mind?”

Negan laughed, and Rick flinched hard. It sounded like his laugh from the woods. He knew now that it wasn’t his real laugh - his real laugh was rich and warm. “Ricky, I was on a twice-a-day fucking schedule. At _least_. I got needs, and since I don’t see any of my wives around, you’re it.”

“Jesus,” Rick said bleakly. He felt his throat tighten and burn to his consternation, and he clumsily turned himself around on his crutches and went for the door. He paused just at the threshold. “You’re gonna see it,” he said hoarsely. “You’re gonna see how much better this world can be without you in it, Negan.”

“Rick,” Negan said gently.

He made the mistake of turning his head.

“Suck my fat cock, you self-righteous prick.” He rolled his hips up off the bed, eyes falling half-shut in simulated ecstasy. “I know you know how.”

Rick clattered out of the room so hastily that he slammed a shoulder painfully against the doorframe, and a dark, mocking chuckle followed him.

—

When Rick reached the bottom of the staircase that led to Alexandria’s single prison cell, he found Tara sitting on the stool on the other side of the bars that Rick often occupied himself. She had her arms crossed and a resigned expression on her face. Negan’s dinner tray was beside her, and Rick was pleased to see that it had been picked clean. There were times in the past few years when Negan’s appetite had seemed to dwindle, and those times had scared him.

He had never allowed any cruelty towards Alexandria’s prisoner: he had kept him fed well, kept him clean and groomed, provided him with books and other distractions, allowed him time outside in the good weather - albeit heavily guarded and in a pair of handcuffs. But he was more than aware that the mere reality of being imprisoned and isolated could wreak havoc on a man like Negan. He was a creature of the flesh, and as much as Rick knew first-hand just how much the man had to atone for, knew how much chaos and cruelty he had rained down on so many, the thought of him pining away like an exotic animal in captivity - it made him feel ill. Made him feel _guilty_ , as absurd as that was.

He should have known that his fears would be unfounded. There was something stubbornly, almost fiendishly resilient about Negan.

“He keeps asking me to sit on his face,” Tara announced as Rick left his cane at the foot of the stairs and shuffled forward, with the air of someone telling the teacher on a particularly annoying classmate.

Rick stared at her, face immediately flaming scarlet.

“Honey, I know I don’t have your preferred equipment, but come _on_. Eating pussy is eating pussy. And, baby, when it comes to eating pussy, I’m the goddamn motherfucking heavyweight _champ_. Ask any six of my ex-wives. Just close your eyes and pretend I’m Marilyn-fucking-Monroe. You won’t fucking regret it.”

Tara held out her arms towards him dramatically, like she was presenting a prize on a game show. “Literally, every single time.” She tugged on a strand of dark hair, turning to Negan. “Man, I wonder if you’re really as good as you say you are.”

Rick jerked in shock, staring at her, as Negan howled with laughter. “ _Tara?_ ”

She shrugged helplessly. “He gets in your head.”

Rick rubbed his mouth sheepishly. _You have no idea, kiddo._

“Anyway, I’m going to go wash these dishes, and then I’m going to wash my eyeballs, ears, and brain. Thanks so much for being as gross as usual, dude.” She bent and picked up the tray.

“Remember what I said, darlin’,” he said in an uncharacteristically serious tone as he watched her through the bars.

Tara nodded at him thoughtfully before turning and making her way up the stairs.

“‘Remember what I said?’” Rick repeated, brow furrowed. “What’s that about?”

Negan grinned. “You haven’t heard, sheriff? I’m the love doctor. Everyone comes down here for to spill their guts for Dr. Negan. Shit, even your boy does. It’s not all smooth sailing with Miss Enid.”

Rick groaned. “I don’t even want to think about what you would be tellin’ him. What are you tellin’ him, for Chrissakes?”

Negan leaned back, smile softening a little. “That he needs to shut his mouth and start listening more. That making someone happy isn’t some big goddamn secret - they’ll tell you how, if you shut the fuck up long enough to hear it.”

Rick cocked his head at him, taken aback. “That’s not bad, I guess.”

“Not bad? Fuck you, Rick, that’s grade-A shit. That’s Dear Abby shit. Come on, can’t you ever give me any credit?”

Rick rubbed a hand through his short, bristly hair. “No,” he said, “because I know there’s always something comin’ around the corner with you, Negan.”

“I can’t help but notice,” Negan mused softly, reaching his arms slowly through the narrow bars towards Rick, “that you are a hell of a lot mouthier now that there’s bars between us, Rick.”

Rick frowned at Negan’s reaching hands, about six inches away and curling lazily into the air like claws. “Really, Negan? You think I was ever scared for myself? I was scared for my family. You’re the one who told me I should be.”

Negan dropped his arms with a groan. “Jesus, Rick, I’m just fucking around. Why do you have to be so goddamn serious all the time? You really gonna throw every shitty thing I ever said to you in my face for the rest of my fucking life? It’s not enough that you fucking _won_?” Negan gripped the bars and shifted his weight on his feet, his eyes lighting up in sudden mischief. “Come on, sheriff,” he purred. “Don’t pretend you’re not warming up to me again. It’s been two goddamn years. Haven’t I been a model prisoner, warden?”

“Stop it, Negan,” Rick warned, his head beginning to throb.

Negan did this more and more often these days, and every time he did, Rick was aware of how fucking _precarious_ it was. In two years, everything had changed, but nothing had, and Rick felt that he was always one hard shove away from tumbling over the edge and falling backwards in time, to the day the whole sordid mess had started.

_Go ahead and put your filthy fuckin’ hands on me, you goddamned murderer. You’re the only one that wants to touch me, so go the fuck ahead._

“Come on, baby,” Negan laughed, and he gave him that grin that he always pulled out when Rick least expected it - that one he had surprised him with the first time they had fucked. The one that made him look like a version of himself that Rick was sure he had never met - sparkling, charming, teasing without being cruel. “Come on. You’re always down here without any good goddamn reason. Oh, sometimes you want to pick my evil villain brain, I get that, but sometimes I think you just _miss_ me. Like right now, Rick - what exactly are you doing right now?”

“I’m leaving,” Rick said tightly, “that’s what I’m doin’.” But he didn’t. His feet wouldn’t move, and Negan’s eyes raked him in malicious delight.

He pressed himself hard against the bars, as if he were hoping he could slip right through them. “Mmm, Rick,” Negan nearly moaned, his name sounding like a filthy promise on his lips. “Remember the time you threw me in the back of the RV and rode me like you were breaking a goddamn horse? You miss it, baby. You miss my cock up inside of you. Tell me the truth, Rick.” He licked his lips slowly and grinned in triumph at Rick’s wide-eyed, red-cheeked face. “That’s why you couldn’t let me die, huh? You know no one else can fuck you like I do.”

It stung.

It sounded mean and cheap, it made Rick feel mean and cheap, and it stung like an actual slap to the face.

“Is that what you really think? After everything? That I didn’t kill you because I wanted to fuck you?” He hated how he sounded just then - frail and sad. He turned away, suddenly desperate to get out of this silly little jail, this too-little-too-late echo of their dead civilization. Negan had managed to poison this, too. Any good and decent thing that Rick strove for, Negan could poison with a few vicious, acid words dripped into Rick’s heart, and he honestly didn’t know why he kept coming back for it. He was a glutton for punishment, he supposed. His relationship with Negan had always been a prime example of that. He reached for the cane he had left at the foot of the staircase.

“Rick, come on. Don’t go, all right?” There was a desperate edge in Negan’s voice that made Rick’s reaching fingers falter and pause. “Stay. Touch me. No one’s fucking touched me in fucking forever, Rick. Come on. Don’t you remember how good I can make you feel?”

“Negan,” he began wearily, but the other man steamrolled right through.

“I was fucking around before, Rick, Christ. You’ve got to know that I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not going to fucking get anywhere by trying to hurt you - you think I’m fucking confused about that? I’m done. I’m finished. Sheriff’s done thrown me in the lock-up, and I’ll never trouble these innocent townsfolk again, blah fucking blah. But don’t…don’t let me rot here, Rick. Come on, what would it fucking cost you? Touch me. Tie to the fucking bed if you have to. Can’t you see I’m fucking desperate? It’s been years. It’s been _torture_!”

Rick had turned to stare at him, eyes wide in surprise, and he flinched a little at the word _torture_.

Negan was begging, his eyes pained and pleading, his mouth drawn down into a bow of distress. Instead of the triumph that Rick thought he might feel to see the man who had terrorized him, the big bad wolf, reduced to this, sadness tinged with something like shame welled up in him. “Are you serious?” he asked quietly, brow furrowing. “Is this a game, Negan, because -“

“No, no, no, it’s fucking not,” Negan said urgently, and the expression on his face made Rick’s heart sink further. Desperation, as he had said. Supplication. Things he never thought he would see in Negan. Things that hurt to see, inexplicably, because after everything Negan had done, Rick should _want_ to see him like this. “I just can’t fucking go on like this, Rick, please. Please. Jesus, I’ve been trying to play it cool, but I fucking can’t anymore. Seeing you every day, sitting right there…sitting so close. So close I could almost touch you. Rick, please. It’s just you and me. No one else has to know. Just you and me. Like old times. God, I miss you so much. Please, baby, _please_.”

It was all over with that. It was inevitable, really. The man could always find a way to win. He had been winning, slowly, day by day, in the war of attrition he had been waging since the first day he put his hands on him as a lover. That war had never ended, although it should have a hundred times over.

Rosita had seen the truth, and her earlier words echoed solemnly in his mind like a prophecy.

_He wants you. He always did. He’s not gonna stop._

_And neither am I,_ Rick realized, and that was it - that was the shove too far, and he fell over the edge and into the void.

Rick pulled a set of handcuffs from a drawer shoved in the corner and slid them across the floor. They clinked lightly as they wrapped around the bars. “Handcuff yourself to the bed.”

—

As far as Negan was concerned, the war was not over when he first descended beneath Alexandria’s verdant, rolling lawns to become the proverbial monster in the basement. He waged war every minute of those distant, early days, and he waged it with the only weapon he had left - his tongue. He lashed Rick with it like a whip, leaving him scourged and bloody. Every scrap of information he had ever gotten about Rick, he loaded up and fired.

_Remind me again what you were doing while your wife was dying, Rick? While a baby was being cut out of her? I just can’t remember why Carl had to be the one to put his mama down, remind me -_

_What was his name again, Rick? Shane! Carl put him down, too, huh? Boy’s had to clean up after his daddy kind of a lot, don’t you think? Good thing he can shoot - or he could, anyway, when he still had two eyes. Now that’s a fucking shame. Too bad you couldn’t keep a closer eye on him - do you fucking get it, Rick? A closer eye!_

And Rick just took it calmly, day after day, and he continued to bring him home-cooked meals and extra blankets and the occasional classic rock CD for the little boom box he had given him wordlessly not long after he first complained of _the fucking quiet, Rick, it’s fucking creepy down here with all the goddamned quiet._

Somehow that all only made him angrier. He had caught a glimpse of Rick - the _real_ Rick, in his mind, a creature with bloody teeth and sharp claws - during the war, and he wanted that creature back. He wanted to _fight_ , but Rick could never just fucking give him what he wanted. His patience, his _saintliness_ , it made him fucking _crazy_. He _felt_ crazy - he bounced between almost dizzying heights of rage, during which he could hardly recall the vicious things he said through the red haze of it, and black pits of despair where he hardly had the energy to get up and eat. Red to black to red and back to black again. It was during one of the latter periods that he realized there was a new, heretofore undiscovered soft spot on Rick. A very soft spot; a spot just begging for the thrust of a knife.

It was a little over three months into his captivity per the rough record he kept for himself in the notebook Rick had given him. He went a day without touching any of his food and keeping his back turned to Rick even as the man fussed at him with increasing desperation. He woke up the next day to find his sneakers missing their laces and all of his clothes missing various cords and drawstrings.

His energy came rushing back. He got up and ate his entire breakfast, practically tingling with excitement. When he heard the door at the top of the staircase open, he straightened up and met Rick with a gleaming, full-toothed smile.

“Do you wanna hear a story, Ricky?” he asked sweetly. “It’s a story about me and my roots.” He didn’t wait for confirmation - he just launched into his tale with the rambling ease of a man used to monologues. “You see, I take after my mother. My dad was a steady, honest, even-keeled, hard-working dude. Sold used cars. Paid his taxes. Stayed on the right side of the law. Just like his daddy and his daddy before him. No rotten apples on that side of the family tree. Poor bastard laid his bike down on the highway one day and slid straight under an eighteen-wheeler. Just about killed my mother.”

Rick was staring at him, puzzled. He slowly sat down on the stool at the other side of the bars and inclined his head. He was listening.

“My mother, now, she was fucking wild, and so were her people. She had a brother…my uncle, he had a lot of vices, and the worst one was that he never said no to earning an extra dollar. He started moving shit for some crew out by DC. Prescriptions. You know? Shit that made its way out the back of a few pharmacies.” He broke off to chuckle at Rick’s expression. “Am I stirring up some memories, sheriff?”

“Were you involved?” There was something that felt instinctive and well-worn about the question, and as soon as the words left his mouth, Rick looked a little surprised at himself.

 _Once a cop, always a cop,_ Negan thought drily. “I already told you, sheriff,” he said with a snort. “I was squeaky clean. Besides, I was fucking seven or eight when this shit was actually going down. And let me fucking tell you the shit that went down: my uncle was dating a lady with a baby junkie on her hands. Her kid had been to rehab after rehab, and he was barely out of middle school. Well, one day the kid wised up to my uncle’s side job and got into the merchandise. Whatever he got his hands on was stronger than the shit he was used to. He was dead for hours before they even fucking realized he was missing. My uncle went to prison for manslaughter and a shit load of drug charges, but that wasn’t the fucking problem. Problem was, he blamed himself. He loved his lady, and I think he loved that stupid little junkie, too, and he blamed himself for what happened to his family. He was a guy who _felt_ things. That was my mom, that was her family - we fucking _feel_ things. We love too hard, and we hate too hard, and we get too fucking angry. It’s our fucking curse.”

“I know you feel things, Negan.” Rick’s voice was soft and sad and earnest, as were his luminous eyes.

It was almost enough to put Negan off what he was planning to do. Almost.

“He kept trying to end it,” Negan said quietly, gaze cold and steady. “Tried to shiv himself. Tried to tie up a noose. He had the place in a goddamn tizzy trying to keep him alive. They finally stuck him in solitary with no sheets, nothing small enough to swallow, nothing sharp - fuck, it was a commode and a mattress. They patted themselves on the back for it, I guess. They _saved_ him, right?”

Rick’s expression was falling further. “Negan - “

“Oh, Rick, let me finish the story. It has such a good goddamn ending. It’s a story about a bunch of pricks who thought they had control over something wild, just because they managed to get it into a cage. My uncle? He laid down on that mattress, faced the wall, and he chewed through his tongue. He either choked or bled to death, or shit, maybe he did both at once. But he was dead as a doornail by morning. And that is what you call fucking _determination_. He had the last fuckin’ laugh. It may have been bloody and tongue-less, but it was his.” Negan chuckled, and it grew and grew until he was bellowing with mirth. The cruel noise bounced off the concrete walls, and the air seemed to strain to contain it.

Rick was white and silent. Several times, he looked ready to speak, but he would just open and shut his mouth like a dying fish. He finally struggled up to his feet and trudged painstakingly up the stairs with the aid of his cane, the laughter following him like a swarm of stinging wasps.

The next day, when Rick came down with a tray of breakfast, Negan was ready for him. He had spent all night and used every scrap of cloth he had - his sheets, his clothes, even his pillowcase - to create his tableau. Rick saw it when he was halfway down the stairs, and Negan gleefully flung his arms out like a showgirl - _tada!_

There were more than a dozen nooses hanging from the topmost horizontal beam that spanned the steel bars of his cell.

All of the color drained from Rick’s face in what seemed like half-a-second, leaving a sickly, alarming grey cast behind. He stood, silent and stock-still, just staring and staring with haunted eyes at the grisly taunt Negan had fashioned for him. The tray slipped from nerveless fingers and banged noisily down the steps, spilling its contents everywhere. A single apple rolled slowly across the floor to rest gently near Negan’s feet.

The guilt was instantaneous, and it liquified his insides. Negan tried to speak, but he just couldn’t find his voice. He was so _sure_ that he would finally succeed in making Rick angry, but instead the man looked like he was on the edge of some permanent collapse. He swayed, and Negan’s heart leapt into his throat as he suddenly envisioned Rick’s body following the tray, tumbling down the narrow, concrete steps.

“Rick,” he snapped, and he didn’t know why it came out like that - vicious and stinging like a scorpion. “Fuck, Rick, can’t you take a fucking joke?”

That brought him back to life a little. He turned, struggling up the stairs on legs that seemed to have grown even more clumsy and stiff.

“Rick, come on,” he wheedled, and that just served to make Rick double his speed. The door at the top of the stairs opened and shut with a bang. Negan realized he was clutching the bars of his cell so hard that his fingers ached and throbbed. _He’ll be back,_ he thought as he released them slowly, _he’ll be fucking back by tomorrow morning._

He was wrong.

—

Negan nearly fell out of his clothes in his eagerness to strip, and it would have been funny under other circumstances. Just about any other circumstances. As it was, Rick was left watching him and hating himself a little for the hungry way his eyes immediately drank in his exposed body. He was still hard and strong even after his years of confinement - maybe even stronger. He often complained to Rick that he had little to do aside from push-ups.

 _This is wrong,_ Rick thought. _It’s wrong, and it’s dangerous._ But it had always been wrong and dangerous, and Rick had already let his jacket fall off his shoulders and to the floor. Negan lay on his back, arms above his head, as he slid the handcuffs through the slatted metal at the head of the bed. He clicked them around his own wrists and glanced over at where Rick was still standing silently behind the prison bars.

“Jesus, Rick, I hope you didn’t suddenly grow a sense of humor and decide to fucking prank me on this one. Hell, I’m not saying it wouldn’t be epic, but…” he trailed off, unable to keep up the joking facade.

Rick was shaking his head. “Wouldn’t do that,” he sighed, and he unlocked the cell and slowly rolled back the heavy door. He couldn’t hold Negan’s burning gaze as he stepped out of his shoes and stripped off his shirt. “Are you sure?” he asked softly, eyes on the floor. “You’re a prisoner, Negan. It really ain’t right. I shouldn’t -“

The peal of unpleasant laughter that met him made him cringe.

“Oh, shit,” Negan wheezed, “are you fucking serious with that shit, Rick? You don’t want to - what? Have your wicked way with me? You have got to be fucking - ah, fuck, come on, Rick. Rick, I didn’t mean it like that.”

He had turned to stare at the wall, feeling slightly ill with all the contradictory feelings raging in him. Even brought this low, Negan never really seemed to lose the instinct to attack. He seemed to love taking Rick’s concern, his good intentions, and spitting on them before flinging them back in his face. That’s why the begging had been such a shock, but perhaps it had just been a set-up for another emotional sucker-punch. Perhaps the remorse Rick had thought he’d seen in those stormy hazel eyes was just -

“Rick,” Negan sighed behind him. “I’m sorry.”

He felt his entire face go a little slack with shock. He could count on one hand the amount of times he had heard Negan say those words out loud.

“I’m sorry. Saint Rick, it’s just too funny. Like you’d ever fucking take advantage like that. Come on, Rick. Saint Rick of Alexandria. Come over here and fucking bless me.” His voice had dropped into that coaxing murmur that always obliterated any little bit of resistance Rick had in him. He heard that murmur in his dreams, the ones he had before he woke up hard and aching, sweating into his tangled sheets. “I want you to so fucking bad, baby.”

Rick stepped unsteadily out of his pants, moving as if he really were in one of those dreams. _We’re really gonna do this,_ he thought, and that thought set his heart slamming against his ribs. He turned and looked at Negan, laid out on the bed, eyes a window to the fire that always seemed to be burning high and hot through him.

 _I want it._ That plaintive, guilty, familiar refrain that had never really left the deepest, most secret place in his heart. _I want it, I want it._

He needed to brace himself with his arm as he crawled slowly over Negan, unable to rely on his bad knee to take his weight. It gave a throb of protest anyway, and Rick tried to hide the flinch. Negan’s eyes flicked from the knee to his face, and Rick braced himself for something ugly. Nothing came.

 _He doesn’t want to say anything to put me off what I’m about to do,_ Rick thought wryly.

“God, I wish I could work you open right now,” Negan murmured, eyes half-lidded, the gold mixed in with the smokey green and brown glinting at him like flecks of molten metal. He gave the handcuffs a little shake, corner of his mouth quirking. “Too bad, baby. You remember how I did? Christ, I _loved_ making you dance.”

Rick sank his teeth into his lower lip, feeling his skin begin to prickle with heat. _Here we go,_ he thought. Negan could always talk him into a frenzy, as much as he hated to admit it in those days. But it had been so long, and the man beneath him wasn’t a fucking sword hanging over his head the way he had been, and - Rick couldn’t lie to himself - the flutter in his chest was an eager one. He let out a soft hissing breath as he slid a finger deep within himself. It _had_ been a long time.

Negan bent his knee and nudged his back with his warm thigh, humming softly. “It always feels like too much at first, doesn’t it, honey? But then I would find that spot, Rick, that magic fucking spot - I know just where it is on you. Could find it blindfolded and-“ he gave his wrists another jingle, smile growing sly, “handcuffed.”

Rick rocked forward with a soft breath as he found it himself, the hot pleasure burning through his hips almost too much, on the edge of discomfort. He found himself leaning slightly into the soothing contact of Negan’s strong thigh against his back.

“That’s right,” Negan purred. “I would get you dancing for me. Thrashin’ around…if someone saw us, they’d think you were fighting me. But you weren’t, baby, you weren’t. But you tried to fight those _sounds_ you would make.”

Rick was fighting them now, fist against his mouth as he rocked his hips.

Negan chuckled beneath him, and the vibration was transmitted through his body into Rick where he pressed against him, from his back to the thighs drawn tight to his sides. “I knew you were gone when you couldn’t help but let ‘em out. Then you were ready to take more. More fingers -“

Rick sank another into himself, breath catching in his throat like something thick and sticky.

“- until you were ready for what you wanted all along.” Negan rolled his hips beneath him, his arousal sliding against Rick’s, and the blue-eyed man let out a sharp gasp as if the contact had pained him. Negan hardly took it better - he hissed, lashes fluttering. “Fuck, Rick, you trying to make me die of blue balls over here? Is this a fucking fucked-up execution? Touch me, baby, I’m going out of my fucking _mind_ watching you.” He rattled the cuffs again desperately.

Rick rose above him, ignoring the sharp protest in his injured knee. “All right, all right,” he murmured huskily as he grasped Negan and guided himself over the other man’s hot, throbbing length. _Out of my mind._ Negan’s words floated through his head as he slid over him, because that’s what it felt like - like he was being pulled right out of his mind. Christ, it had been so long, and he really hadn’t prepared himself enough, but he didn’t care about the pain in the least. Pain was an old companion. What robbed him of his breath was the realization of just how badly he had wanted this; he had wanted this as much as Negan. He had _always_ wanted this as much as Negan. It was so much easier to admit now, but there was never a time when it wasn’t true.

 _Out of my mind._ When it came to the man beneath him, that’s how it had always been.

Negan’s arms and shoulders strained, muscles bulging, as his lips pulled back from his teeth. He looked like Rick was just about killing him, and as Rick slid a few more inches down his length, his neck arched back, displaying the long, thin scar that snaked across his throat. “Rick,” he ground out, “Rick, _fuck_ , Rick…”

Rick bent, placing his palms flat on Negan’s chest and trying to breathe through all the sensations assaulting him at once. “I know,” he said shakily, and he prayed that Negan wouldn’t use this against him afterwards, because it was fucking obvious how completely undone he was in this moment. He rocked his hips, taking Negan in him to the hilt with a long, slow, shivering sigh.

Negan’s throat worked as he made a broken, helpless noise, and Rick found himself folding further over him to kiss the sensitive skin there, his lips inevitably brushing over the rough scar tissue.

Negan surged his entire body into the contact, nearly throwing Rick off balance, and the cuffs clanged loudly as he fought them on instinct. “Rick,” he panted, “Rick." He seemed incapable of saying anything else as Rick rode him slowly, his palms braced on the hard planes of his inked chest.

"Negan," he scolded breathlessly as Negan rattled the cuffs violently, "for Christ's sake - "

"Rick, please. Let me fucking touch you.” He jerked at the restraints yet again, the loud jangle ringing throughout the underground room. “Come on. I’m not gonna fucking hurt you.”

Rick slowed, considering.

_I’m not gonna fucking hurt you._

Did he believe that? In the two years since the war, he had spent countless hours with Negan - arguing with him, seeking his advice, trying to convince him that his vision of their world - peaceful, comfortable, _safe_ \- could be real. Had it meant anything? He thought he saw growth, introspection, and even, on rare occasions, regret, but maybe he was fooling himself. He was good at fooling himself when it came to Negan. But he had already fallen this far, and a part of him ached to know.

He reached forward and unlocked the handcuffs.

Negan surged up immediately, and for a single terrifying moment Rick was sure he had made the most absurd miscalculation of his life. Then he was swallowed by the other man - a hand clamped on his hip, fingers sinking into him as he added his strength to Rick’s motions, bouncing him hard on his cock. At the same time, a muscled arm wrapped tightly around his chest, crushing Rick against him as his lips and teeth assaulted his neck. “Negan,” Rick gasped, feeling as disoriented and overwhelmed as he would had Negan been a wave knocking him down and dragging him underwater.

“Fuck-fuck- _fucking_ -fuck-“ Negan’s breathless cursing faded into a moan that ran through Rick in a hot wave as the man tumbled over the edge into his own bliss. Rick’s erection was trapped between their bodies, and between the feel of it sliding over Negan’s taut stomach, that desperate, delicious moan, and the warm spill of his release inside him, Rick felt himself slip over his own edge. He cried out, head falling to Negan’s shoulder as he clenched and shook through his peak. He felt a hand in his hair, and his head was tugged back roughly. Before he could react, lips had descended on his in hungry kiss. Rick panted through it, floating down from his orgasm, and Negan’s tongue slipped past his parted lips.

It felt _right_. It felt like water after a drought, and Rick was as dismayed as he was terrified.

Negan broke the kiss to lean back and glance down at the mess between them, looking back up at Rick and arching an eloquent eyebrow. “Can you give housekeeping a call, honey? I think we need some new fucking sheets.”

Rick was aware that this could all go south. Hell, now that the blood wasn’t split between his head and other regions, he felt the full force of the insane risk he had taken the moment he had uncuffed Negan. The man grinned at him, his eyes darkly amused. He sensed his unease - Rick knew it.

“This ain’t a hotel, Negan,” he muttered.

“Maybe not, asshole, but it’s the least you can do considering you came all over them,” Negan shot back, waving the soiled white fabric.

Rick swallowed, climbing slowly and carefully out of Negan’s lap as if he was a landmine that might go off if jostled. “Fine. Okay. I’ll get you new sheets.”

Negan chuckled as he watched Rick’s retreat. “You gonna cuddle up with me on the new set, baby? We can throw a towel down this time so we don’t ruin them when I pound you again.”

Rick had begun to gather up his clothes, and he paused at that, hearing something in his tone. He looked up at Negan, meeting his dark eyes. He realized the other man was serious. “Not…not tonight,” he said quietly, and he saw actual disappointment flash in the other man’s eyes before he smothered it. He drew his pants back on carefully, unable to suppress a hiss of pain when he was forced to stand on his bad knee. He was going to pay dearly tomorrow for the strain he had just put on it.

“Easy, Rick,” Negan muttered from where he still lay with his arms crossed behind his head. “Fucking sit down to do that.”

Rick stared at him in some surprise as he buttoned himself. “It’s fine,” he said quietly, pulling on his shirt. He had his back to him. He knew the risk, but he had already thrown every caution to the wind, so what was the point? What had been simmering all along between them had finally reached its boiling point again, and there was no going back now.

 _If he kills you now and runs off, it’s what you deserve,_ a voice hissed at him from the back of his mind.

He was inclined to agree, and he dressed quietly, head bowed and back turned, waiting for whatever was about to happen next.

—

Rick didn’t come back the afternoon after his stunt with the nooses. Negan cleaned them up immediately, expecting him to show up and not wanting him to fucking see them again, but when the lunchtime rolled around, it wasn’t him. It wasn’t him that evening, either. Or the next day. Or the day after.

It was Aaron, his face a mask of righteous anger, who came to leave him his trays without uttering a single word in response to Negan’s provocative little jabs.

Negan accepted this turn of events sullenly, convinced it couldn’t last and waiting for the soft tap of Rick’s cane on the stairs.

It never came. One week became two. Edged into three.

Negan’s impatience won out over his pride. “I need to talk to Rick,” he pleaded when Aaron appeared with his tray of food. “Come on. Just…please.”

“What do you want to say?” Aaron set his tray down for him and straightened, watching him closely.

Negan was so relieved to hear the sound of another person’s voice that it took him a moment to respond. “I want to tell him it was a fucking joke! Come on, he can’t fucking - “

Aaron had spun hard on his heel and was already halfway up the stairs. Negan watched him go with something akin to fear.

“I need to tell him I’m sorry,” Negan said desperately when Aaron appeared again that evening. He had hardly moved from the spot he had left him in. “Please. Just tell him I want to tell him I’m sorry. I - I didn’t fucking mean…I didn’t mean it. I don’t even know why I fucking did it.”

Aaron let out a long, slow exhale from his nose at that. His eyes shut. His head fell back. He stayed there silently for a moment, and Negan felt sick with anxiety. It crawled through him like an army of spiders skittering through his gut and over his skin.

Aaron straightened up with a sudden movement, his eyes springing back open. “You’re hurt,” he said. There was a quiet fury in his eyes, and Negan could tell he was expending significant effort to control it by his clipped, restrained tone of voice. “You’re a predator with its leg in a trap. This is the unspeakably shitty way you act when you’re scared and in pain - you just try to drag everyone who gives a damn about the fact that you’re scared and in pain down with you. Do you really think you’re going to feel any better if you torture Rick? Is it going to add one iota of happiness to your miserable existence? Rick is the only person on this earth that cares about you, Negan. The _only_ one.”

“I - “

“The Sanctuary has _forgotten_ you.” The volume of Aaron’s voice was steadily rising. “Sure, I’ll bet there’s some people left there that are pissed off that their former leader is a prisoner, the same way they’d be pissed if the Redskins didn’t make it to the Super Bowl. Sure, fine, maybe there’s a couple people you managed to be decent to that think about you from time to time. But they don’t care, Negan. They don’t _care_. Do you see them here? They can come if they want. Rick has made it abundantly clear that he would let them. _Nobody does._ You are here because you are a horrible man who did horrible things. The only reason why you didn’t get a bullet to the back of your head to a standing ovation is because of Rick Grimes. He _saved_ you, and if I live a hundred years, I will never understand why. From where I’m standing, you’re not fucking worth it.”

“I’m not worth it,” Negan agreed quietly. “You’re right. I just…I want to tell him. Please tell him that I want to see him. Even if he is giving up on me, even if he never wants to fucking see me again after…I just need to tell him I’m sorry.” Horrifyingly enough, he felt tears sting his eyes. He could suddenly imagine it - a lonely lifetime of confinement and solitude stretching ahead of him without Rick Grimes. Without his warm, slow drawl, his lovely eyes, his exasperated looks. Terror and despair rose up in him in equal measure, and felt the last of his pride crumble beneath their twin weights. “Please, Aaron,” he begged, uncaring that the man could hear the desperation in his voice. “Please. I need to tell him.”

—

Negan watched him dress through his lowered lashes. He was aware of the opportunity that presented itself here - it would be the easiest thing in the world to get the upper hand with Rick now. They were fairly evenly matched before, but that fucked up knee changed everything. But so what?

He didn’t want to hurt Rick, so that was a non-starter. He hadn’t been bullshitting before, either: he knew if he tried any of that great-escape shit, if he tried tying Rick up and making his way out of Alexandria, he wouldn’t get five fucking steps before one of those fine citizens put a bullet in him. Negan thought a good deal of his own prowess, and rightfully so, but 300-or-so-to-1 were shitty fucking odds. And if he got out, then what? Go back to wandering around alone in the fucking nightmare the outside world had become, dodging rotting monsters that wanted to fucking _eat_ him like a bucket of fried chicken? No fucking thanks.

Most importantly, though, he didn’t want to fucking leave Rick. The man had wrenched him off his throne, sliced his throat open, and tossed him in a jail cell, and he didn’t want to fucking leave his side. He had spent many a long night grappling with that realization, usually somewhere on a continuum between rage and bewilderment, hand moving on his cock as the blue-eyed man’s face rose before his mind’s eye. Ever since he had first fucked him, that man had his fucking claws buried deep in his hide. Although, when he was being honest, he knew his fascination had started long before that. Its perverse birth had been in that little clearing in the woods where he had first torn him open. Then, as today, it seemed like the choice had already been made for him, like something fated to happen all along.

He was no one to argue with fate. He was gonna fucking _stay_ , right here in Alexandria, in Sheriff-fucking-Grimes’ lock-up. And he knew that he had to be on his best behavior to not fuck up the miraculous turn of events by which the sheriff had ended up back on his dick.

He watched Rick as he gathered his clothes, his blue eyes shifting warily to Negan’s every so often. He laced his hands behind his head and leaned back against the metal headboard, giving Rick his most dazzling smile. That only made the other man look more wary, and he felt mocking rise up in him - he couldn’t fucking help it. “What’s the matter, Rick? Still scared of the big, bad wolf?” He kicked himself internally when he saw Rick’s eyes harden at him. “Aw, _come on_ , sheriff. I’m being good,” he protested. “See? Look at how fucking good I’m being.”

Rick scoffed at him, pulling on his pants. “Yeah,” he muttered.”You were always a hell of a lot easier to handle after a fuck.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he looked shocked at himself, and Negan nearly rolled off the bed in a paroxysm of laughter.

Rick locked the door to the cell and limped off while he was helpless with laughter, and he returned shortly with the promised set of sheets.

“Aren’t you a sweetheart,” Negan purred as he took them from him.

Rick avoided his eyes as he bent and carefully took the rolled up ball of the soiled set. Negan imagined he would wash them furtively in his house, terrified at the thought of being discovered red-handed - or white-handed, as it were - and the image made his smile grow wider.

“You gonna think about me tonight, sheriff?” he crooned, tilting his head to the side.

“Negan,” Rick said warningly.

Negan chuckled, still riding high on what they had just done. “Yes you are, Rick. You just close your eyes tonight and think about me all wrapped around you, fucking you just how you like, and then you go ahead and give yourself a little squeeze.” He absorbed the predictable glare with a cat-that-caught-the-canary smile, and he dropped his voice. “I’ll be doin’ the same.”

“Any more demands?” Rick snapped irritably, the sheets bunched up in an angry ball between his hands.

“Yeah. Grow your hair back out, baby. I loved running my fingers through those curls. Come on. They were so fucking cute.”

Rick turned wordlessly and shuffled back to the staircase.

He couldn’t resist one last shot. “See you tomorrow, lover boy,” he sing-songed.

“See you tomorrow,” Rick replied, and he sounded subdued, sad. His tone matched the slow, painstaking way he shuffled up the steps, his way made awkward by the narrow purchase for his cane and the bundle in his arms.

Negan frowned. He felt some of the sheer euphoria fall away from him, like ash from a waning cigarette. _Killjoy,_ he thought irritably as he ran a finger over the long, thin scar that streaked his neck.

Rick’s mark - that’s how he thought of it. The mark of his victory over him as well as his mercy, a mercy that had confused and enraged him, because he knew full well it was undeserved. He was just being a jackass before - he knew it had nothing to do with Rick wanting to fuck him. Rick was a grade-A, dyed-in-the-wool martyr - sacrificing the guy he fucking loved getting plowed by for the sake of his people would just feed into his own sense of self-righteous forbearance. He would have added that onto the pyre he was building for himself and let it burn him up. No, sparing him - that was nothing more than _mercy_ , as simple and infuriatingly complex as that.

Could he really try to believe in that? That mercy could be something freely given in this world? He truly didn’t fucking know. He grinned into the dark of the room, running a hand over his mouth. If Rick Grimes wanted to keep trying to convince him, though, he wasn’t going to fucking fight him on it. The smile faded from his face as the other, less enjoyable memories from earlier crept back in. Rick’s slow and shuffling gait, the sadness in his voice, the shame in the limitless blue of his eyes.

Being locked up alone in the dark was a fitting punishment for a man like him. Before, he could fool even himself with his performances. Now, with no audience, he could never escape the truth. Oh, there was still a part of him that thought he could fuck Rick like this for the rest of his miserable days, leaving him frayed at the edges and filled with self-loathing, because he was a creature of the flesh, and his flesh demanded it. And Saint Rick had fallen yet again, right into his sinful embrace.

The other part of him knew better. It knew the truth that slithered around the edges of his conscious thought like a viper, ready to sink its teeth into him and spill all that poison into his blood.

 _You think I want it to be like this?_ he had told him, more than two years ago now. _Come on, baby, I love you._

Negan didn’t think he had ever seen such raw horror and fear on someone’s face, and he had looked into the eyes of men he was about to bludgeon and burn to death.

Rick hadn’t let him finish his proclamation, of course, which was fucking smart, because Negan’s love was poison. The people it seeped into died.

His bitter laugh rent the silence of the empty room. Oh, god, he _hated_ being alone with his thoughts like this. It made it so much harder to shove away the memory of Rick looking at him, eyes absent of anything fearful or cautious, the night he had told him about Lucille.

That was what he had to keep him warm in that cell. Not the dream of fucking him again - that was fucking delicious, but it wasn’t warm. Warmth was that look in Rick’s eyes on exactly that one occasion, that soft look Negan had never done anything to deserve. Warmth was what Rick had whispered to him as their bodies rocked together - _you belong to me_. If his fascination had been birthed in the clearing, something else was birthed in the safe house that day - something far more dangerous. Something _poisonous_.

_Come on, baby, I love you._

Even through the rage and humiliation that burned through him after his defeat at Rick’s hands, he had never been able to fool himself into thinking it was gone. It slid through his dark corners every moment of the long, lonely, shitty days of his captivity. It was fucking funny, when all was said and done, and Negan let out another miserable laugh to the audience-less chamber.

 _Careful, baby._ It had been so long since he heard his thoughts spoken in her voice, and he shivered involuntarily. _Be careful. Love? That’s a lit stick of dynamite you got there. You really think you can handle it?_

“Never could fucking handle that shit, baby,” he whispered into the still air, and the sound of his own voice, faint and trembling as it answered a ghost, suddenly frightened him.

—

Negan didn’t expect any swift resolution after pleading his case with Aaron. He was expecting another stretch of lonely weeks as righteous torment for his cruelty. He was prepared to meet it meekly, too, if doing so would convince Aaron to put in a favorable word to Rick.

When he heard the halting step-tap-step of him on the stairs later that night he couldn’t move for a full minute. He bolted up and almost fell out of his bed before dragging himself over to the bars and all but slamming himself against them.

“Rick,” he breathed, almost dizzy with relief as the man appeared on the staircase. “Jesus, darlin’, it’s so fucking good to see you.”

Rick kept his eyes down as he descended, and he gave no sign that he had even heard Negan. He reached the bottom with a small sigh, and he took a few halting steps towards the bars of the cell.

 _He thinks this is a trick,_ Negan realized, and his heart sank. “Rick,” he said again, softly, “Rick, look at me.” He cringed the moment he said it.

_Look at me, Rick._

He lifted his head. The skin beneath his eyes was purple-dark, and he looked exhausted and unhappy. Not unlike the way he looked when Negan rode giddily into Alexandria in the weeks after their bloody introduction.

_Speak when you’re spoken to, Rick!_

Something sour burned a path up from his stomach to his throat, filling his mouth. “I don’t know how to fucking say it,” Negan said, his voice suddenly thick. “I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry. I - I…wanted to…hurt you.”

_Get on your knees, Rick._

“I don’t know why I did. I guess you’re the only one that…the only one that cares enough to get hurt when I pull shit like this. Fuck, I _know_ you’re the only one that does. There would probably be a goddamn parade if I died in here.” He gave a weak chuckle, and he leaned his forehead against the bars, suddenly weary.

Rick was silent for a long moment. “Are you gonna keep bein’ like this?” he asked finally, voice barely audible. “Are you gonna keep makin’ it hard? Things are so hard already, Negan, I don’t know why you - “

“I’m not, I’m not, I’m…fuck, Rick, I can be good. I will be good. I swear. I’ll be a model prisoner. Just please don’t leave me down here alone, I…I need to fucking see you. Okay? I know I don’t have the right to ask you for anything, but just let me see you.”

Something uncertain flashed up in Rick’s eyes, and his gaze fell to the floor. “I won’t leave you alone,” he said quietly. “Just…don’t do that again. It was cruel, even for you.”

He deserved that, but coming from Rick as it did, plain and honest - it ached. It was a familiar ache, but he had used to be so goddamn good at walling shit like that off. He couldn’t do that anymore. He didn’t have the necessary amount of distractions to manage it. That’s what the sentence for his crimes amounted to - not physical pain, not deprivation, just the slow and steady crumble of every defense he had erected to protect himself from his own outraged humanity. “I will never, ever fucking mess with you like that ever again, I swear. I’m gonna be good now. Can we shake on it?” he asked hoarsely, reaching a hand out through the bars. “Please?” He knew it was too much, knew he should be grateful that Rick came to see him at all, but it was his nature - he always wanted more.

Rick eyed his outstretched hand, chewing on his full lower lip a little. Then he took a few more steps forward, and he held out his arm. Feeling like he was in a dream, Negan clasped Rick’s reaching hand.

He tried to fucking behave, he did, but what he did next was not a damn handshake. It was a groping. He rubbed his fingers almost feverishly over Rick’s flesh, as if he were trying to hastily map out every inch - every line, every callus, every scar. He laced his fingers through Rick’s, and it was all he could do not to fucking _cry_ at how good it felt to touch him again. As it was, he was keenly aware of the burning at his throat and in his eyes.

“Negan,” Rick whispered.

“I’m sorry,” he replied instantly, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go. He couldn’t be sure he would ever get to do this again.

“Negan,” Rick said again, a little firmer. “Stop. It’s all right.”

Negan gave a despairing laugh. “You think so, huh?”

Rick lifted sad eyes up to his. “It can be. I keep tellin’ you.”

He swallowed thickly and nodded a little. Slowly, reluctantly, he let his hand go.


	2. War is Never Cheap, Dear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS. It is definitely NOT my intention to make you wait an eon between chapters. It truly isn't, and I'm sorry it took SO long to get this one up. I'm just really struggling to find the time. I promise you I won't leave you hanging on a story permanently unless I end up in a ditch somewhere. Happy holidays, and I hope you like the chapter although it is a lot of exposition. *scampers away*

  
The war council, with representatives from all five communities rising against the Saviors, was not exactly going as Rick expected.

“We can’t have a direct assault on the Sanctuary.” Rick met the sea of eyes, their expressions ranging from thoughtful to impatient to angry. “We gotta think of the big picture. We’re just shooting ourselves in the foot if we destroy infrastructure - every building, every wall that comes down is one less for the survivors. And that’s mostly who are in the Sanctuary - just survivors. Not soldiers. We can’t risk - “

“We can,” Sasha interrupted smoothly, “ _because_ of the big picture, Rick. I wish we could win this war without killing a single person. You and I both know that’s not how it works.”

“The dynamite traps we set up already took out the Saviors en route for pick-ups,” Jesus added from his spot leaning against the wall. “We sent a hell of a message. The blood’s already been spilled - there’s no going back now.”

“I ain’t talkin’ about goin’ back, I’m talkin’ about having some rules. Wars got rules. We attack the Sanctuary, civilians are gonna die.”

“You think the Saviors care about rules?” A woman with close-cropped dark hair wearing a necklace of shells shook her head at him. “I watched them put a bullet between my dad’s eyes. He was nearly eighty. He had arthritis in every joint in his body. He never fought them, but they came through and killed every man in our group, no exceptions. They killed teenagers. What rule book is that out of?”

Rick hung his head and passed a hand over his forehead. “That’s horrible,” he said thickly. “I’m sorry. I truly am.”

“‘Eye for an eye’ is a shitty philosophy, dude,” Tara said softly from beside him, fixing the woman with her sympathetic gaze. “You wouldn’t turn around and do all that terrible shit to someone else. You wouldn’t. That’s what makes fighting this war the right thing to do - we’re better than that. We can make things better for everyone if we get the chance, even the people living at the Sanctuary. We can’t lose sight of that.”

“Being better won’t matter if we don’t win,” Carol said solemnly. “Nothing matters if we don’t win. We have to do what it takes to survive, or we have to accept that we’ve given up and let the Saviors or the Governor or the Wolves or Terminus take us. There’s no halfway here. We’ll pick up the pieces when it’s done, but we have to go in with one thing in mind.” She let her piercing blue gaze sweep the room, lingering on Rick. “Survival.”

—

The war council, attended by the highest ranking Saviors, was not exactly going as Negan expected.

“We can’t have direct fucking assault on Alexandria,” Negan snapped. “Don’t you chuckleheads ever think about the big picture? We blow Alexandria to shit, and that leaves us - where? Without a big fucking planned community with houses and solar panels and running water. Are you shitting me? What the fuck kind of sense does that make?”

“Boss, there ain’t a gonna be a big picture or a small picture or a wallet-sized picture if we don’t get on top of this thing,” Simon said, bushy eyebrows drawn down. “This shit started with Alexandria, and we need to send a message - “

“We don’t know where it started. Not really.” Gavin always sounded mournful, but his tone was downright funereal today. “There’s been trouble at the Kingdom - and new faces, too.”

“From Alexandria!” Simon fumed. “That’s Rick the prick and his pack of merry nutlickers! They spread out across the communities, and they’ve been sowing the fucking seeds of this shit since since day one! Well, the shit seeds are sprouting, boys and girls!”

“The shit seeds are sprouting,” John agreed, regarding Negan with his one good eye. “But hell - grim reaper over there is right. Who knows who pulled the trigger on it? The things I’m hearing are fucking spooky - I’m talking about the ghosts of the past. Avenging angels. You heard of that, Simple Simon?” He looked pointedly at the man.

“That’s bullshit,” Simon grunted, but he looked a shade or two paler. “That group cleared out ages ago.”

“We’ve heard rumors for a long time that they set up somewhere east,” Arat put in quietly. “Near the ocean. It’s not impossible that someone made contact. We’re not a hundred percent sure what we’re up against, and that’s all the more reason to be smart about this. We need more intel before we move.”

The door to the conference room banged open, and half a dozen guns were drawn in response. Laura stood in the doorway rolling her eyes at them.

“Where the fucking fuck have you been?” Negan growled, fighting to hide the relief that was flowing through him at the sight of her, whole and unharmed. He had lost a handful of his best today to that chicken-shit dynamite, and it had shaken him. It could have been anyone who tripped it. It could have been _him_. In the back of his mind, an image was haunting him - a pair of dark-fringed blue eyes, large and luminous, filled with tears. _Crocodile tears,_ he thought venomously. “I was starting to think your ginger ass had been blown up.”

“It almost was,” she shot back before reaching behind her and shoving a shaking, sniveling mess of a man through the door. “Mullet boy here stopped our convey before we went over one of those fucking dynamite traps. He wants to jump ship. I couldn’t get much out of him, though.” Her expression was pinched and irritated. “He won’t stop fucking crying, no matter how hard I hit him.”

“Remind me to never ask you to babysit, Laur,” Negan said dryly. He walked over to the crumpled ball on the floor and crouched down. “Eugene?” he tried. “It’s Eugene, right? Yeah, I know all about you, Eugene. You’re the brains, right? You got enough brains to see the writing on the wall, anyway. Are you gonna help us shut this shit down?”

“I-I-I-I…” he broke off into a hiccoughing sob, and Laura threw her hands into the air.

Negan regarded him thoughtfully. The man was chalky-white with terror. Negan straightened up with a grunt. “Me and Arat are going to the Hilltop with some guys,” he announced. “We need to see what Gregory knows about this shit, and why his squirrelly ass never gave us a head’s up. I doubt he’s in the fucking dark.”

“Gregory’s loyal,” Simon protested, shaking his head. “He’s too much of a pussy to be part of this.”

Regina scoffed at him. “Pussy’s the toughest thing on the planet, you fucking Neanderthal,” she sneered. “That sleaze ball Gregory has you fooled. He’s been playing every angle he can since the beginning. But you’re right about one thing. We need to strike - Alexandria, the Kingdom, whatever - we just need to raise some hell. We can’t just sit here with our thumbs up our asses after what they did - we need to fucking retaliate.”

Negan picked up Lucille and wordlessly hefted her onto his shoulder, letting his eyes roam over his council. Someone drew a breath to speak, and before they could manage it, Negan brought Lucille down onto the table with a deafening _bang_. It cost him, somewhat - the blow reverberated up his arm, and his shoulder ached in protest, but the effect on the collective mood was immediate. Faces paled, eyes grew watchful, and everyone drew back in their seats. Eugene let out a terrified yelp, like a kicked dog.

“Let me tell you what you need to do,” Negan said, voice deadly quiet. “You need to sit here, thumbs in or out of your asses as per your personal preference, and defend the fucking Sanctuary. No one steps a fucking foot beyond these gates until I say so. If I hear about anyone trying any shit behind my back, I will execute you.” He reached down and seized a handful of Eugene’s jacket, and the man groaned in terror as he was yanked to his feet. He gave him a broad smile, and Eugene seemed to collapse in on himself at the sight of his gleaming teeth. “Lead the way, my man,” he said cheerfully. “You’re gonna help us get to the Hilltop in one piece.”

Laura was still standing in the doorway, and Negan gave her a brief nod as he filed out, Arat close behind him.

—

About six months into his sentence in Alexandria, Laura showed up. Her hair was down, and it was the first thing he noticed, because he had never seen in that way before. It tumbled around her shoulders in red-gold waves, and it made her look younger. Softer.

“Hey, hey, jailbird,” she grinned, as if he hadn’t spent half-a-year utterly isolated from his old companions.

“Hey, sugar stack,” he tossed back with an answering grin, as if he hadn’t given up on the thought of seeing any of them ever again. “What brings you to _casa_ Negan?” His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his fingertips, but his voice was steady.

“Just in the neighborhood,” she shrugged, “and thought I’d stop by. How’re you holding up?”

“Holding up?” Negan chuckled. “Baby, nothing gets me down. Shit, I get waited on hand and foot by a guy in a pair of tight jeans and cowboy boots.” Negan wolf-whistled. “I couldn’t afford that kind of company in the old days, you know what I mean?”

Laura laughed, tossing her head back, and the sun streaming through the skinny, high-set basement windows glinted off her hair. “You paid for _company_ , Negan?”

“Nah,” he grinned, hooking his wrists through the bars, “that shit never sat right with my ego. How’s the Sanctuary? Sherry bustin’ everyone’s balls?”

“It’s all good,” Laura said, suddenly studying her nails. “You know. Same shit, different day. We’re muscle, like we always were. We patrol, we play whack-a-biter, and the communities pay us in food and shit for the trouble. Not as much shit as before, but…you know. It’s enough. Everybody’s playing nice.”

“Saviors, rebranded,” Negan said with more than a touch of bitterness. “Smart.”

Laura lifted her head, shoving her hand in her pocket. “The Saviors were a good idea, Negan,” she said quietly. “We’re still a good idea. The communities fucking need us. Sherry knows that, and she knows how to be sweet about it. But the operation…you’re the one that built it. We all -“

“ _Don’t_.” It splintered the air like a gunshot. Negan held her wary eyes for a moment before flashing his teeth at her in a broad smile. “You think I give a fuck about any of that now, Laura? I don’t. Save the bullshit. You know what the one great thing about being in here is? I don’t have to listen to any _bullshit_. I don’t have to deal with any _bullshit_. Don’t fucking come in here acting like you wanna suck dick in gratitude because I built the Sanctuary. You don’t. You don’t give a fuck who built what you have. Good. You shouldn’t give a fuck! You should just take what you can get out of all this, Ginger Spice, and don’t fucking look back, because you know the good days never last for long.”

Laura’s lips had tucked down into a displeased frown, but there was something underneath the hardness in her eyes. Something wistful and uncertain. “You always have a fucking speech ready, don’t you?” she muttered.

Negan snorted, shifting his weight on his feet. “All I got is time to think up speeches.”

She looked away.

“Go home, Laura,” he said quietly. “Just…go home. The fuck are you doing here, anyway?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” she said defensively. “I already told you.”

“Well, thanks for dropping by. Bring a bundt cake next time.” He felt certain there wouldn’t be a next time. Talking about the shit he built and the good ideas he had - that was goodbye. That was the kind of shit you said over an open coffin. _I’m buried alive,_ he thought, and he felt an icy terror begin to well up in his chest. He thrust it away violently, back into the recesses of his mind. No way in hell he would show fear - not to Laura, not to anyone.

“Bundt cake,” she echoed. “Got it.” She didn’t look back as she climbed the stairs, and Negan was pleased at the evidence that his soldiers could still follow a fucking order.

—

“You know,” Negan began casually, adjusting the rearview mirror until he could look directly into Eugene’s fearful eyes, “it has occurred to me that this is a trap.” They had just pulled away from the Sanctuary to head towards the Hilltop. Arat was behind them with a truck full of armed soldiers.

Eugene shook his head wildly, looking too frightened to speak. He was sweating right through his clothes.

“No? Well, look - if it is a trap, you took the temperature of the room back there, right? If I go down, the Sanctuary is going to unleash hell. I doubt there’s gonna be a single white picket fence left by the time Simon’s done with your neck of the woods. You get me, buddy boy?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Eugene sniffled. “I have entertained every permutation of this scenario, and none of the outcomes are favorable. While it may seem cowardly to defect, I would prefer to live a coward than die a brave man, and I would bargain for the same fate when it comes to my companions, although I am sure they will hate me for it.” His face screwed up, and a fresh flood of tears tracked down his round cheeks.

Negan pulled out of the gates of the Sanctuary, Arat following close behind him. The jeep she was driving was packed full of armed muscle. “Eugene,” he said slowly, “if we’re gonna be pals, you’ve gotta be honest with me.”

Miserable, frightened eyes found his again in the rearview mirror. “I _am_ \- “

“You’re not just here because you wanna save your friends from getting killed,” he said gently. “Right? I mean, sure, you don’t want them to fucking get killed, but you’re mostly here for one reason.”

Eugene swallowed beside him with an audible click. “What reason would that be?” he whispered.

Negan exhaled a soft sigh through his nose. “You don’t wanna be scared anymore. You wanna run with the wolves instead of from them.”

Eugene hung his head, and he began to weep steadily. These tears were different than before. These were raw and aching, grieving rather than fearful, and they poured from him unabated as if Negan had tapped some wellspring in the darkest part of his heart.

“Who are you?” he asked calmly.

“Negan,” Eugene sobbed immediately. “I’m Negan.”

“I know you are,” he replied soothingly. “Eyes on the road. We’re relying on you to keep us from hitting any surprises.”

They made it to the Hilltop just as dusk fell, cloaking the settlement and its surroundings in a dirty orange glow.

Gregory almost fell over himself hurrying out to meet him. He always looked terrified to see Negan, but there was something a little more desperate than usual underneath the unctuous manner. He chattered as Negan swept up the grand staircase to his opulent office, but Negan hardly took any of the noise in. He was watching. He watched the faces of the residents as he passed, and he knew.

“Who’s leading the uprising, Gregory? I know it’s not you.” He was sitting on the antique desk, Lucille balanced on his knees. Jesus was leaning against a far wall. Negan had caught sight of him on the way in and beckoned him with a crook of his finger. Arat was watching him with the intensity of a hawk ready to dive, hand on her gun. Eugene cowered behind her.

It was a crazy risk, really, walking into what was now an enemy settlement with just a handful of soldiers. Soldiers who were milling outside the door now, but who could probably be overtaken if enough of those people with the hateful glowers decided to put their minds to it.

 _You push people too far, Negan._ So many people had told him that - Lucille, Rick, Sherry, his bosses, his coworkers, his family - that it was impossible to attribute a single voice to the thought as it bubbled up warningly in his mind.

Gregory was stammering, flapping his hands like a distressed bird.

Negan sighed, leaning his head back. “I know there’s an uprising. I know the Hilltop’s involved. I know you’re not the one that lead the Hilltop into this - you’re no soldier, Gregory, am I right? You’re not gonna risk your fucking neck. So who stepped up? Who had the big, swinging balls?”

Gregory straightened up, lifting his chin. “It was my fault,” he said, delivering the words as if he were standing at a podium to a rapt audience, “for taking pity on a pregnant lady with nowhere else to go. Lovely-looking girl. It was weak of me, I admit it, but she is a lovely-looking -”

“What?” Negan asked, more amused than puzzled. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Gregory wet his lips nervously. “The widow,” he said, shooting a glance at Jesus. “She’s the one. She-she talked them all into it. Into her _vendetta_.”

Negan knew by the hitching of Jesus’ breath that it was the truth. He glanced at the man and took in the fury in his eyes as he glared at Gregory. He snorted softly in amusement. “Gregory, Gregory,” he mused. “You really don’t have even a single drop of loyalty in you, do you?” He led his head fall further back for a moment, staring the ceiling. “So the pretty widow is alive, huh? Those sly fuckers in Alexandria had me going. Thought she bit the big one after that night. But now I find out she’s been hiding here all along. Lotta people been lyin’ to old Negan.” _Pregnant lady,_ he thought. _Fuck fuck fuck._ He hadn’t known the girl was pregnant. He recalled the way she had looked that night - chalky-white to the lips and sweating, her eyes sunken deep in her delicately beautiful face. She looked sick, but he hadn’t given a thought as to why. And he had kept her on her knees for hours, until the grand finale.

_Maggie, I’ll find you._

“She’s not here anymore,” Jesus said quietly, cutting into his thoughts.

Negan dropped his head to look at him. “No?”

“No. She’s long gone.”

Gregory whirled, pointing an accusing finger at Jesus. “He’s colluded with them since the beginning,” he shouted, face going red. “Under…undermining me! Undermining you! He - “

“Shut up,” Negan said calmly. He stood, and Gregory fell back an anxious step, towards the grand glass doors opening to the small balcony. “The beginning, huh? What about that, Gregory? Are you sure it was Jesus who was doing the _colluding_? Aren’t you the one who sent Rick to that outpost? Aren’t you the one who promised him a deal for supplies if he could take me out? I know it was you.”

He didn’t, actually. He had no idea who had put Rick up to it, but he knew someone had. Based on the timing, Gregory had been his biggest suspect, but there was no way to test out the theory until now.

Gregory went white, eyes bulging with horror.

Negan smiled in dark satisfaction. _Simon, you goddamned idiot._ “Why did you give him such shitty intel?” he asked quietly. “Why didn’t you tell him about how big my fucking operation was? About the Sanctuary? About all the outposts? You fucking set him up - you realize that, right?” He chuckled, scratching at the dark stubble on his cheek. “Funny, isn’t it? How shit gets put into motion? I wonder how it would have fucking gone if they had never made it to the Hilltop. We would have found them eventually. Would have strolled in the front gate and struck a deal, No muss, no fuss, no heads caved in. _Maybe_ ,” he amended, with a wry twist of his lips, thinking of the smoldering defiance in Rick’s eyes even as he pointed Lucille at his face, her wooden head painted with gore and inches from those full, soft lips. He turned his head to look at Jesus.

The man was staring back intensely, then his gaze shifted to Gregory, then it shifted to the balcony, then back to Gregory, then back to Negan.

Negan gave him a cold smile, his eyes lighting up with appreciation. “You see that, buddy boy? This is the goddamn problem. You don’t have the fucking guts to do what’s necessary, so you look to big, bad Negan to do your dirty work.”

Jesus swallowed, his throat visibly working, but he offered no contradiction.

“People like me,” Negan snarled, “are the reason why people like you can sleep at night. You fucking remember that. You tell Ricky boy that. You tell the Widow, you tell the King. Go and spread the gospel, Jesus.”

Gregory’s head was swiveling back and forth between them, his face a mask of bewilderment. “What are you - “

Negan shoved him hard, once, and sent him tumbling over the edge of the balcony. His eyes were wide and disbelieving as he went over. He was too shocked to even scream. There was a few minutes of silence before the sickening crack and the chorus of gasps and cries from below.

“You people better get some fucking perspective on this thing,” Negan said calmly, “before all this shit goes too far. You got the sermon straight?”

“The only sermon that anyone is gonna be interested in is the one about how this can end without people dying and without everything just going back to how it was before the war,” Jesus said, eyes on the empty balcony. “Would you really sit down and negotiate?”

“Negotiate? Why the fuck should the man on top negotiate?”

“Because he wants to stay on top.”

Negan narrowed his eyes warningly.

Jesus held up a hand. “Negan, this may all work out in your favor, but maybe it won’t. You’re the only one that can put a stop to it. The Saviors were taking too much, and they were shitting on every community they went to. Something was always gonna give. You can fix this before it gets bloodier. I think you’re the only one that can.”

Negan glared at him, his fingers aching from the iron-grip he had on Lucille. “I’ll hear their stupid ideas,” he said finally, “but I’m not fucking promising anything. I have shit set up the way I do for a fucking reason. It’s not all rainbows and gumdrops, but it keeps people alive.”

“It hasn’t kept people alive, Negan,” Jesus said bluntly. “That’s the problem. Too many bodies. Bodies at the Hilltop, at the Kingdom, at Alexandria. I think you get that. You got people feeling desperate and scared, and then they act desperate and scared, and then you kill them for it and then everyone gets more desperate and more scared.”

Negan snorted out an angry breath, seething. “You know what’s stopping me from beating your holy brains the fuck out?” he began. “I -“

“Know I’m right,” Jesus finished tiredly, dropping his crossed arms. “You know I’m right. You want to save this.”

Negan turned away from him with a curse, slamming Lucille down onto the polished desk. It was the second time he had swung her into an unyielding surface, and his shoulder ached all over again. “Go set it up,” he snapped.

Jesus slid towards the door. “You’re not wrong, you know,” he said sadly over his shoulder as he paused in the threshold. “Someone has to do the shit nobody wants to do.”

Before Negan could reply, he was gone.

—

Negan had exactly one regular visitor in his prison cell aside from Rick, and it wasn’t any of his Saviors.

The first time Jesus showed up, it was about couple months in. He was tossing a box of cigarettes from hand to hand.

“Well, well, well,” Negan said, trying to hide his astonishment, “if it isn’t the Prince of the Earth.”

“The devil is the Prince of the Earth,” Jesus said with a grin, “didn’t you pay attention in Sunday school?”

“Do I _strike_ you as someone who paid attention in Sunday school?”

“Jesus is the Prince of Peace,” he said, holding out the cigarettes. “See?”

“Aw, shit. I hate to turn down a gift given my present circumstances, but I don’t smoke.”

Jesus blinked at him. “No? Could’ve sworn you did.”

Negan chuckled. “I used to. I quit when…man, that shit causes cancer. Sherry still smokes, send ‘em her way. I nagged her to stop, but she never fuckin’ listened to me.”

Jesus shrugged and put the box in his coat pocket. “Damn. I’ll try and find you something else. Any requests?”

“Booze,” Negan answered immediately. “I’ll suck your cock for a bottle of Johnny Walker black. But why the hell are you playing Santa?”

Jesus shrugged. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Negan echoed incredulously. “Why don’t you ask around? Don’t you all hate my fucking guts? Doesn’t everybody want to see me dangling from the nearest shady tree? Come on, man, don’t fucking play dumb.”

Jesus was shaking his head. “That’s not how I feel about it. You’re not the only one to blame for every bad thing that happened. Even if you were, what’s the point? It’s over now. You’re in here. You’re not in a position to hurt anyone anymore.”

“That’s right,” Negan said, a mocking bite in his voice, “this kitten’s been declawed.”

Jesus gave him a thoughtful look. “I doubt that.” He rubbed at this beard. “If the sit-down had happened - “

“Man,” Negan drawled, interrupting him, “it’s just like you said. What’s the point? It’s over now.”

He shrugged. “Just sayin’. Shit had already been put in motion before I even left the Hilltop that day.”

“Shit was put in motion way before that,” Negan muttered. “Destiny, you know? You believe in that, J-man?”

“I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “Sometimes I do. Hell of a good scapegoat, anyway. Lives could have been saved on both sides if…you know. If things hadn’t happened so fast. And if you were willing to cooperate at the sit-down,” he added pointedly, shooting him a searching look.

Negan chuckled darkly. “‘If things hadn’t happened so fast.’ Man, you say it like it was a fucking twister that hit the Sanctuary instead of an army. Come on. It didn’t just happen. You people made it happen.”

“You know that Alexandria is the only community that voted against the assault, right?”

“I may have heard that.”

Jesus gave a faint snort. “And?”

“And?” Negan echoed irritably. “What do you want me to say? That it’s so ironic, Alanis? I wasn’t the one that ordered - “ he caught himself at the last moment, but it was too late.

“You weren’t the one who gave the order to bomb Alexandria,” Jesus said triumphantly. “I _knew_ it. It was Simon, wasn’t it?”

“Shit, what is this - you want something to gossip about at your sewing circle?” Negan sneered, trying to hide his discomposure. “What the hell’s it matter? Like I fucking said, it’s all over now.”

“Did you tell Ri-“

“I would have given the order,” Negan snarled, alarmed at the turn the conversation had taken, “if I had had the chance. And if…I didn’t want the damn kids there. That was all. I wouldn’t have done it with any fucking kids there. Would have given them a chance to evacuate them. But you bet your holy ass I would have rained hell down on you ungrateful pricks. I didn’t know shit about Alexandria voting against the assault until after the fucking war. Rosie came down here to tell me all about it - to rub it in my face how wrong I had been to single them out for the retaliation, how Rick had stuck his neck out, how Carl had almost been - “ Negan broke off, fingers tightening on the bars as he choked back the fury that crawled up his throat from his suddenly sour belly as the memories came rushing back. He didn’t even have a chance to leave the Hilltop before the news came rolling in: the Sanctuary had been breached, Saviors were dead by the dozens, the wall was down and walkers had flooded in, and then…Alexandria was on fire. It had been dizzying, and all he could do was accept each astounding development occurring outside of the reach of his hand with a sickening, impotent rage.

Jesus’ voice broke into his reverie. “Would you have cooperated at the sit-down?”

Negan sighed and let his head roll against the bars. “I don’t know, Paul. I’m a man of many moods.”

Silence stretched out between them, and Jesus seemed lost in his own thoughts. “The world isn’t so black and white,” he said finally, “is it?”

Negan licked his lips and clicked his tongue. “That’s why I’m in here,” he sighed. “I thought it was black and white. You know? Dead or alive. No shades in between.”

“There’s plenty of shades in between,” Jesus replied, forehead creasing. “There’s all kinds of things you don’t wanna be, and ‘dead’ is just one of them. It’s not the worst one. It’s not the worst one by a long shot.”

“That’s a very spiritual answer,” Negan said drily, “but ask someone with a gun in their face if there’s something worse than being fucking _dead_.”

“You did ask someone with a gun in their face if there’s something worse than being dead,” Jesus returned softly. “You asked Alexandria.The Hilltop. The Kingdom. Oceanside. The Scavengers. They answered you. But you already knew the truth, right?”

“I know the truth. Everything turns to shit, because people are shit-making machines. That’s the gospel according to Negan.”

“You don’t believe that. People are better than you think they are. You’re better than you think you are, too.”

Negan laughed bitterly. “Ho- _ney_. I think you’re letting your nickname get to your head. You tryin’ to save my soul?”

Jesus smiled wryly at him, and his gaze turned penetrating. “I’m not the one trying to save your soul, Negan.”

Those words seemed to strip him. He gaped at Jesus for a moment, and then the anger came - welcome and familiar. “Fuck you,” he snapped. “And fuck him. And fuck all of you.”

Jesus raised both his hands in surrender. “There’s a liquor store a few clicks east of a strip mall I’ve been clearing out,” he said placatingly. “Bet I’ll find something there. Johnny Walker, right?” With that, he touched two fingers to his forehead in a salute and jogged up the stairs.

The anger didn’t last. It never did these days. It melted into something he couldn’t name - something that ached in his hollow chest. Something that stirred the remains of his heart, no longer dead but not quite reanimated.

—

It barely more than an hour after Negan left the Sanctuary for the Hilltop that the assault started, announced by a van slamming through gates, full speed. The dead staggered in after, seizing the shocked guards that rushed in. A shower of flaming arrows floating almost gracefully down into the courtyard, and that’s when the screaming started.

Simon saw it all happen from a high window, and he turned to race down the factory stairs, yelling every curse he could recall. His throat was hoarse by the time he reached the ground floor. “Barricade the gates with the trucks,” he roared at the gaggle of Saviors he found on the floor of the factory. Civilians were running every which way, looking like mice scurrying around a cage. _Stupid fuckers,_ Simon thought furiously, and he viciously swatted away a middle-aged woman who was creeping close to them for protection, sending her sprawling to the floor.

Laura charged into his field of vision, her face set and furious. Something exploded outside, and the noise amplified in the enormous space, leaving Simon snarling and clutching at his ears in agony. “Snipers on the roof with me,” Laura yelled, “shoot everything that moves outside the gate.” She disappeared up the stairs, hair streaming behind her.

Regina was beside him, a wicked-looking assault rifle clutched in her hands.

“What’d I fucking tell you all? We should have hit them first!” he shouted, and Regina’s lips pulled back in a sneer.

“Cry about it later,” she snapped. “Get your fucking gun out and get ready to kill these idiots.”

Simon signaled the armed group behind them, and they ran for the entrance of the Sanctuary. They emerged under heavy smoke and the staccato pops of gunfire. Simon saw John crouched on the side of the tipped-over van that had run down the gates, sinking a hunting knife deep into the eye of the driver that had struggled halfway out of the twisted metal. Simon recognized him from the Hilltop. _Shit,_ he thought viciously. _Shit, shit, shit._ He heard the hoofbeats of a horse, and his head jerked towards the noise, his heart nearly stopping in his chest from the sheer shock. A mounted Kingdom soldier was riding through the chaos, cutting people down with a -

“Is that a fucking pole-axe?” someone asked incredulously.

A spray of gunfire erupted from Regina’s rifle, and the soldier and the horse went down hard. The horse emitted what could only be described as a scream, and Simon saw lurching figures approaching it through the smoke.

“Fuck,” he growled, “we need to watch our fucking backs out here. We got some party crashers.” He aimed and fired a few rounds at another Kingdom soldier who was clashing with a Savior. The man went down, his spear falling from his hands. The Savior nodded at Simon, and then a blade emerged from his chest, spraying blood onto the dusty ground. He fell, revealing a pale, gangling man in swathed in dark, tattered robes.

“Hey, that’s one of those weird trash fucks!” Connor had appeared beside him, gun drawn and ready. “They turned on us!”

That was it - the fucking _audacity_ of the betrayal. Everything went red.

He shot, slashed, and hacked his way through the chaotic battle, screaming like a madman. He caught flashes of his companions around him, but he was too far gone to coordinate his efforts with them. He was on a one-man crusade of death, and he did not come back to himself until every one of the invaders was either dead or fled.

He stood in the middle of the smoke-filled courtyard, breathing like a bull, soaked from head-to-toe in gore. He drew a deep breath and spun on his heel, loping towards the group of men that had stuck by him in the chaos. He began to chuckle as he approached them, feeling his lips stretch over his teeth.

“Shee- _it,_ boys,” he sang. “Look at this steaming pile. Huh? Oh, mama. Do we have some shit to settle.” He pointed towards a balding man in a hunting jacket. “Don, get to Mikey’s outpost and get everyone that can pick up a fucking gun. Swing by the dump and wipe the trash people out. Connor, get your boys and load up on the fireworks. We’re going to Alexandria, and we’re gonna burn that place to the fuckin’ ground.”

“Should we wait for Negan?” Connor asked, his voice hoarse from the smoke.

“Wait for Negan? Wait for Negan? Do you see this cornucopia of shit that has landed on our doorstep? You wanna sit here and jerk it until daddy comes home? Shit man,” Simon snapped, feeling his blood grow icy in his veins as he said it, “the big man might already be dead for all we know.”

The Saviors exchanged alarmed looks, muttering amongst themselves.

“Go,” Simon snarled. They scattered like startled birds before him.

—

They were on their way back from the war council to Alexandria, their two cars making a tiny caravan. Rick, Michonne, and Rosita were together in the sedan in the lead, followed by Tara, Maggie, Sasha, and Aaron. Rick found himself anxiously checking the rearview to assure himself everyone was in place. Adrenaline was moving through him in waves ever since the conclusion of the war council, and he felt faintly sick with its effects.

The Sanctuary was to be attacked at midnight by an army made up of fighters from the Kingdom, Oceanside, the Hillside, and the Scavengers, the strange group of survivors who lived in the trash heaps. They had the best relationship with the Saviors by far, but they still accepted the overtures of the other communities. Rick hadn’t liked them. He sensed greed in their aloof, oddly-spoken leader, and he was suspicious of their motives. Still, they were hardly in a position to turn down the help.

The question of whether to attack immediately had been put to a vote, with five members from each community voting as individuals, and it had passed fairly easily. Alexandria had been the sole objector, with Rick, Michonne, Aaron, and Tara voting against and Rosita voting for. Alexandria had ultimately volunteered to receive the army after the attack and serve as the hub for the rebellion. Their settlement was the best suited of all the communities to survive a siege, and that’s probably what it would come down to when the Saviors regrouped.

“They’re gonna fall back to the Kingdom, and then they’re gonna circle around to Alexandria,” Rick mused out loud. “We probably got about twelve hours to get ready. We need people on the perimeter. And we gotta get the people who ain’t gonna fight to a safe place.”

Michonne was nodding. “The sewers,” she said, “just like Aaron said. I think Reg had the blueprints for the town somewhere in his office - we could take a look if we have the time, but I think we should just get our people and supplies down there. We should send the new doc down there, too, to set up a temporary infirmary. It’s only a matter of time before the fight comes to us.”

Rosita was shaking her head. “It might all be over today,” she pointed out. “Shit, they would have had a better chance of ending it if all of us were there.”

Rick sighed, shifting in his seat. “It won’t be over today. The Sanctuary is a fortress, and the Saviors are soldiers. They’ve been prepared for war all along, because it’s all they know. It’s how they survived. We outnumber them, but that’s not everything. We gotta be strategic.”

“I heard your speech,” Rosita scoffed. “We all did. Vote went your way, didn’t it? Real democratic. But you’re wrong, man. Should have been a full-court press. It was our best chance to lock it down early.”

Rick glanced into the rearview again, searching for Rosita’s eyes. “You’d make the decision for all of us if you could, huh?” he asked quietly. “I been there, Rosita. There was a time when I wouldn’t have wanted a vote. I would have just made the decision for everyone. The way I was…it cost me. It cost me more than I ever wanted to pay. Just take it from me, please. I ain’t tryin’ to talk down to you, but I got some grey hair, so I feel like I can give out a little advice: doin’ shit on your own ain’t worth it. You won’t like what happens to you. You won’t like it when the people you love start lookin’ at you different. Hell, that’s…” he trailed off, eyes drifting down the road ahead of him. _That’s Negan’s problem,_ is what he wanted to say, but he caught himself. He didn’t want to say his name.

“Speeches and lectures,” Rosita muttered behind him, but when he met her eyes in the rearview mirror, there was no venom there.

The walkie crackled from where it was clipped to his belt, and Tara’s voice came through the static. “Uh, guys?”

Michonne leaned over to pluck it free. “Tara?”

“We need to pull over really quick. Maggie needs to pee again.”

Michonne lowered the walkie and laughed, her dark locs bouncing on her shoulders as she tossed her head back. “Tell Maggie if she thinks this is bad, just wait until the baby’s old enough to kick. They aim for the bladder.”

“Oh my god, that’s the worst,” Tara groaned. “Look, you guys keep going, and we’ll be right behind you. We’re almost to Alexandria.”

“Tell Aaron to keep an eye out, and Tara and Sasha should go with Maggie,” Rick said to Michonne, who nodded and relayed the message. Rick felt that sickening anxiety come back - he knew they were on the edge of a maelstrom, and he didn’t know who would be standing after the war. He had insisted that Maggie and Sasha come with them to Alexandria, not trusting the Hilltop to remain safe. It was only a matter of time before that snake Gregory betrayed them, and he couldn’t bear to not keep them close with the danger closing in around them.

A warm hand on his shoulder interrupted his anxious thoughts. He looked over at Michonne.

Her eyes were soft and solemn. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re the ones who win.” She smiled, and he mirrored it weakly.

He couldn’t stop glancing in the rearview, although he knew they were too far ahead to catch sight of them when they returned to the road. When the walkie crackled again, relief coursed through him. But instead of Tara, it was Tobin.

“Rick, Michonne, do you copy? Anyone?”

“Copy,” Michonne said into the walkie, frowning. “Tobin? What’s going on? Everything okay in Alexandria?”

“Eugene split,” he said tersely. “He was supposed to be on guard duty, but I guess he used the opportunity to steal a car and take off. I don’t even know how long he’s been gone. I only found out because I came to relieve him. Probably at the damn Sanctuary by now.”

There was a breathless silence.

“What?” Rosita was ashen, her eyes huge and dark in her beautiful face. “What? What the fuck? He…you think he fucking turned on us?”

“Holy shit.” Tara was back on the walkie. “Did I just copy what I think I copied? Eugene?”

“Tell them to get to Alexandria now,” Rick said hoarsely, gripping the steering wheel. “If that’s what happened…he knows all kinds of things that could hurt us in a war.”

“At least he doesn’t know about the attack tonight,” Michonne muttered before she spoke into the walkie. “Tara, hurry back to Alexandria. We’re about fifteen minutes away. We need to get a message to the others about this.”

Rosita was hissing a stream of curses under her breath, her head in her hands.

The sun had just sunk beyond the horizon when they pulled into the gates of Alexandria, and twilight’s lovely pink glow made the world look deceptively soft and inviting around them.

Tobin was waiting for them, his forehead creased and his hands on his hips. “I got another surprise for you,” he said grimly. “Just got a message from - from Carol.” His eyes drifted to his boots as he said her name. “Told me to tell you guys that they’re attacking the Sanctuary early. Any minute now.”

“Fuck,” Rick breathed, raising a hand to his forehead. “We had it all _planned,_ why the hell -“

“Doesn’t matter,” Rosita broke in sharply. “We need to haul ass. Let’s start getting shit underground. Tobin, stay on the gate - we got another car coming in with the others. Should be ten minutes.”

Rick nodded, tracing the handle of the axe at his hip. “Let’s get to the church. Father Gabriel can help us round up everyone who needs to get to a safe place before…” _Before it all goes to hell,_ Rick finished silently. The unease that had been percolating in him all day had boiled over into dread.

“I hope that’s the last surprise for today,” Michonne sighed as they jogged towards the church.

It wasn’t. The first bombs fell not two hours later, just as the moon began to climb the sky. Tobin was the first casualty when one hit the guard tower, bringing it down.

Rick had been working with the others in the infirmary, hastily packing up their supplies to move them into the sewers. There was a horrible roar from outside, and then everyone was flung off their feet as the earth shook beneath them. The young doctor that Carl had befriended and brought to Alexandria was thrown directly into Rick, and he apologized shakily as he clambered off of him. The light suddenly streaming from the windows was orangey-bright and flickering, and a freezing wave of horror crashed over Rick as he realized it was fire.

“Get underground!” he shouted at the young man, pushing a box of supplies into his arms. “Now!”

Rosita was scrambling to her feet beside him, and she drew her gun with a snarl and charged out into the smokey air. Rick followed her, his heart in his throat.

_Carl and Judith. Carl and Judith. Carl and Judith._

Maggie had gone to the house to pack up some food and blankets for Judith. He had told Carl to help her. They would be there, surely. Surely they would be there, safe and sound, and together.

The town had been transformed into the scene from a nightmare. Houses and trees were on fire, and acrid smoke filled the air so thickly that Rick could barely see through the haze. There were screams, near and distant, and the steady _pop-pop-pop_ of gunshots coming from the gate. Rick sprinted for his house as bombs exploded around him, fire raining from the sky.

_Carl and Judith. Carl and Judith. Carl and Judith._

They weren’t there. The house was silent and empty.

Rick fled back out into the inferno, and he nearly ran into a Savior who was slinking through the smoke, rifle nestled on his shoulder. Rick brought him down with a hard tackle, freeing his axe from his belt and burying it into the man’s head with a harsh shout. He sat back, clutching the bloody axe, breath heaving. His eyes fell to his belt where a walkie was clipped, and he snatched it in a moment of inspiration. He shakily tuned it to a frequency he thought he would never have cause to use again.

“Negan!” he cried desperately. His voice was sandpaper from the smoke. “Negan, please! Call it off! Call it off!”

There was a painfully long moment of dead air before - “Rick?”

“Call it off!” he begged. “I can’t find Carl or Judith. Just gimme a chance to -“

There was another burst of hissing static from the walkie, and then Negan’s voice suddenly faded in. “ - hell are you talking about? Where - “ His voice faded again, and Rick nearly screamed in frustration. Something exploded too close to him, and he was thrown back, ears ringing as he lay on the grass and panted. Embers floated down around him like fiery raindrops, and he groped in the grass until his hand closed over the walkie again. “Call it off, Negan!” he screamed.

The reply, if there was one, was completely unintelligible, and Rick flung the walkie away from him in rage and terror, staggering to his feet. He drew his gun with his free hand and ran toward the screaming.

Walkers had gotten in. Rick brought them down again and again and again, frantically searching through the smoke for a familiar face. His axe stuck in the skull of a man wearing the remains of a three-piece suit, and he struggled to free it as two more lurched closer. Gunshots split the air, and they went down in a shower of blood. It was Sasha, standing a few yards away.

“Where’s Maggie?” Rick shouted over the roar of the burning around them.

“In the sewers with Judith,” Sasha shouted back, and Rick could have fallen to the ground in relief. “We have to block up the gate to stop more walkers getting in. Let’s get to the cars!”

They took off running together, bringing down walkers that shambled into their path. They found Aaron on the way, standing over the body of a Savior. He straightened up, shoving the gun he had pulled off the body into his belt.

“It’s not a big group,” he yelled, “but they have fire power.”

“No _shit_!” Sasha returned, and Aaron gave a shrill bark of laughter that sounded just on the edge of hysteria.

They were just nearing the gate when Rick saw him, fighting through a thick crowd of walkers, blade flashing in the firelight. Michonne was a dozen or so yards away, fighting through the same crowd, trying to make her way to him.

“Carl!” he shouted, sprinting to him. “I’m here! I’m right - “

It wasn’t the sound or the heat from the explosion that hurt him - it was the light, so blindingly white that it seemed to sear the inside of his skull. He was thrown off his feet for the third time, and he lay on his back for what seemed like an eternity, unable to do anything but gasp in the aftershocks of that horrible light. Someone was pulling him to his feet, and he clutched at them unseeingly.

 _Carl._ He thought there was a figure in the distance, standing where he had last seen his son. It seemed to be made of smoke or light, and something billowed around it. He tried to stagger forward, and someone was shouting in his ear. He couldn’t make out the words.

The figure was looking down, and Rick followed its line of sight.

Carl was lying on the grass, illuminated by Alexandria’s burning, white as the flowing wedding dress of the figure standing over him. His hat - Rick’s hat - had been knocked off his head.

He was screaming something over and over, and Aaron would later tell him that it had been “ _don’t take him!_ ” He jerked free of the arms holding him up and flew to Carl’s side. Michonne got there at the same time, slicing through a walker that was nearing the fallen boy. Rick fell to his knees. He was afraid to look up, but he could still see it fluttering in the corner of his eye - a soft train of fabric. Or maybe some smoke. Or maybe the remains of that horrible, searing light.

“Carl,” he sobbed, and he hadn’t realized he was crying. “Carl.” His hands fluttered over the boy’s pale face, as he scanned him for injuries. He pressed fingers into the white throat and felt the reassuring thump of a heartbeat. He looked up and caught Michonne’s stark, terrified gaze.

“We gotta get him underground,” she shouted, and Rick nodded frantically as he gathered Carl up.

It was a familiar nightmare - running, running, running, with his boy’s limp body in his arms. The roaring flames replaced the eerie silence of the woods, and Carl was so much bigger, heavier, on the cusp of becoming a man.

 _Don’t take him,_ Rick begged silently, his breath tearing raggedly out his chest as he struggled through the hell Alexandria had become, Michonne cutting their way through walkers. _Don’t take him, don’t take him._

He thought he could still see the flutter of white skirts at the corner of his vision.

—

After it happened - after the news of Alexandria’s bombing, after John arrived at the Hilltop with a cadre of soot-and-mud-and-blood-stained Saviors, after he understood how badly his fortress had been breached, after the extent of Simon’s power grab had become clear - Negan was left alone in the ornate office that had been Gregory’s throne room. John and his guys had spread out, sweeping through the Hilltop for weapons and supplies to take back to the ailing Sanctuary. Even Arat was gone, which was a surprise. She must have gone to help the others, and he was surprised at how adrift he felt without her solid, reassuring presence.

 _Simon and a bunch of guys were gone by the time the smoke cleared,_ John had told him, leaning on a rifle. _He wouldn’t respond on the damn walkie, but I got one of the guys on - Mikey - he said Simon gave the order from them to get everything we had that goes ‘boom’ and haul their ass to Alexandria. Said they were gonna light ‘em up. I knew it wasn’t you that gave the order -_

 _Of course it wasn’t fucking me that gave the order! I just fucking got through explaining this shit - Alexandria has resources! And there’s fucking kids there!_ Negan had been roaring, the noise echoing through the stately old house. _Just like that fucking community that went missing! I told him what would fucking happen if he pulled that shit again! I told him that he only lived through that fuck-up because he was my goddamned fucking shitting fucking friend -_

John was one of the very, very few people who wasn’t afraid to tell Negan the truth.

 _You shouldn’t have let it go, boss,_ he had said calmly. _You know it’s always the people closest to us that fuck us good._

Negan’s answering laugh sounded unhinged even to his own ears. _You have no fucking clue, my man, you are preaching the fucking choir._

He knew on some level that it was absurd to be surprised at any of the day’s developments. Simon had been grasping at more and more of his power. Rick had been miserable. The communities had chafed under his rule. It was all a fucking powder keg with about four or five fuses just waiting to be lit, and it was only now, after the explosion, that he realized how fucking arrogant it was to be so goddamn _sure_ that fear would keep the matches from being struck.

He realized it, but it did nothing for the aggrieved fury. Salvation wasn’t pretty in their new world - it meant austerity. It meant obedience. It meant the weak becoming strong, even if it killed them. He had spent every moment of his time in the blighted aftermath of the world trying to save people - from walkers, from starvation, from their own savagery and stupidity - only for it to turn into a steaming pile of shit. It was all so infuriating, so fucking unfair, that he could hardly breathe through the outrage.

The walkie crackled, interrupting his thoughts, and then - “Negan.”

He nearly dropped it in his haste to unclip it from his belt. “Rick? What the fuck is going on over there?”

“Don’t you know?”

Negan ran a hand over his face and through his dark hair. “No,” he said honestly, after a moment’s deliberation. “I don’t. I didn’t give the order.” That was met with a long silence, and he could read the accusation in it. It made him aware all over again of the fury bubbling in him like a poisonous brew. “I’d fucking tell you if I did,” he snarled. “You think I’d be shy about it? I’d be down there. I’d be front and center if I had lit that fuse. We’d be having this conversation face to face, or crotch to face, with you back on your knees in the fucking ashes where you _belong_.”

A cold, bitter chuckle reached him through the static. “ _There_ you are. Jesus came down here sayin’ you wanted to sit down. Talk. I knew better, though. Tiger doesn’t change his stripes, does he? It can’t be any way else with you. It has to be you on top with everyone else down in the dirt and the ashes and whatever else.”

“That was before you fucking attacked the Sanctuary, you self-righteous prick,” Negan fumed. “You fucking put this all into motion! _Again!_ What did you fucking think was going to happen?”

“I think the Sanctuary is going to fall, and so are you. Alexandria is just one community, Negan. You have enemies everywhere. You’re damn good at makin’ ‘em.”

Negan dropped his arm and breathed evenly through his nose, trying to fight the red tide of rage. He cast his memory back to a few hours earlier - _Call it off!_ the garbled voice had pleaded over the walkie at Negan’s hip. _I can’t find Carl or Judith._ He was afraid, he realized. Afraid to ask. Afraid to know. Afraid to acknowledge the horror and helplessness that had buzzed through him like wasps from the moment he heard the plea. “Kids okay?”

“They’re fine,” Rick replied tersely.

The relief was so powerful it was almost nauseating. “I know they’re fine,” Negan scoffed, grateful for how the crackling static conspired with him to hide the emotion in his voice, “because if they weren’t, you wouldn’t be talking to me like this. Honey, you’d be -“

“Shut up,” Rick snarled suddenly. “Shut the fuck up. Don’t you _fucking_ call me honey. I will rip your fuckin’ tongue out when this war is over just to stop you callin’ me all that shit. I’m not your sweet honey baby, Negan, I’m the man whose kids you almost got killed, and you are gonna fuckin’ _pay_ for what you done to us.”

Negan had seen Rick seething and defiant - _not today, not tomorrow_ \- but the utter ferocity in his voice and in his words now was something new. He sounded rabid. For the first time, his ex-lover sent a cold trickle of fear from the top of his head down his spine. It shocked him, but he felt strangely exhilarated in the wake of it. _Gratified_ , somehow.

“Are you now?” he drawled into the walkie, heart beating a nervous and excited tattoo against his ribs. “Are you gonna make me pay, Rick? You got it in you, huh? What else are you gonna rip out of me, _honey_?”

The silence that followed stretched out for so long that Negan thought Rick had just given up in rage and disgust.

“Simon’s dead.”

Negan froze, mouth half-open, breath knocked out of him.

“I don’t know who killed him. My people found him not far from Alexandria, but it wasn’t any of us.”

“Like hell it wasn’t.” Negan’s mouth was dry, and the words came out cottony and indistinct.

“Wouldn’t lie about it if it was, Negan. We put the body in a flatbed. We’ll give you the coordinates, and we’ll call a four-hour cease fire for you to pick up the body.”

“You really think I’m gonna fucking fall for that?”

“It ain’t a trick.”

Negan dropped his arm, still reeling from the shock. _Simon’s dead?_ he thought confusedly. _Simon’s dead? Fucking can’t be._ The walkie crackled to life in his hands, and although it was utterly perverse given the circumstances, Negan found himself soothed by the low, sweet drawl that flowed from it.

“I didn’t like him. Never liked him,” Rick said slowly. “I thought he was cruel and selfish. If there was more to him than that, I just couldn’t see it. But I know he was your friend. You should get to bury him. Even wars got rules, Negan. We should all get to bury our dead.”

Negan lifted the walkie back to his lips like a man in a dream. “I didn’t give the order, Rick. Say you believe me.” He should have been embarrassed by how he sounded just then - shaken, pleading - but he was too dazed. Simon was dead. He had come close to having more dead kids on his ledger, close enough to turn Rick into that crazed thing he hardly recognized on the other end of the walkie, and it was just at that moment that he realized how utterly he had lost control of everything.

“I just don’t know anymore, Negan,” Rick said quietly on the other end of the line. “Get something to write these coordinates down.”

—

He was in a flatbed, just like Rick had said he would be. He was wrapped in a clean sheet, and when Negan tugged it back, he saw that the man’s arms had been folded over his chest. Respectful. Like a body at a wake, laid out by a careful funeral director.

He stared at the white, still face of one of the few people left on earth that cared about him. His eyes burned and burned, but it was like something was blocking the tears. As if tears were a relief that neither of them deserved. “Sorry, man,” he muttered. “War’s hell.” He pulled the sheet back over his face, hiding it and the single bullet hole in his forehead.

He walked a few steps away before he unfolded the paper that had been tucked into one of Simon’s lifeless hands.

_Sunset at the Hilltop. Bring everything you got. Let’s finish it._

 


End file.
